IVY - Hush (2025) [Hi-Res]

The opening track, Invasions, sets the tone with a gloomy circling guitar figure before collapsing into bassier depths. The band use space masterfully: echoing guitar and voice pared back to near silence before the full ensemble surges into a heavier groove. The beat skips and destabilises, creating a sense of disorientation. It is a powerful statement of intent, an introduction signalling the darkness and drama ahead.

Loon begins with urgent guitar and skittering drums before settling into a bass-led groove. Vocals weave in and out of the mix, trading intensity with swooping guitars. The track grows in waves peaking and collapsing, before fading away. Its lyrics speak of alienation and fragility: “Do you feel alive, do you feel at all” repeats like an incantation, while “They were flowers to the cold” lands with tragic force.

Where Loon wrestles with despair, Tall Grass stretches it into something epic and cinematic. Strummed guitars and echoing tones shift underfoot as the song refuses to settle. Vocals and guitars shadow each other, while rumbling and charging passages keep the listener on edge. The imagery is stark: “Stay in this hole and die in my bed and in my head” makes the personal sound apocalyptic.

By contrast, Real Love emerges from a lighter guitar line and sonic fragments before easing into a stop-start groove. Vocals sit higher in the mix, clear and declarative: “This is not real, Real Love”. The refrain repeats to the point of obsession, intensifying as the song builds. It grows urgent and chaotic, before receding into a delicate interplay of drums and guitar.

Colours in the Sky feels like a breather: acoustic strums give way to electric swing, the pace more reflective and measured. Yet even here the band tighten and release, pulling back into hushed tones. Whispers follows, beginning with a drunken drumbeat that morphs into ominous rhythm and echoing guitar. Vocals soothe, violin stabs intrude, and by the end it sounds like a fever dream dissolving into air.

Heartless is among the most ambitious pieces. At first there is acoustic guitar and spoken word, drifting like fragments of prophecy: “I saw of a maiden singing her communal prophecy”. Soon the beat quickens, electric guitars shimmer, and the track lurches through dramatic shifts, from soothing to melodramatic, before four false endings leave the listener grasping. Its lyrics occasionally verge on overwrought, but conviction in delivery carries the song.

The penultimate Blank White is mysterious and slow-burning: sparkling notes, gentle rhythm, and calm vocals that gradually blur into noise and intensity. By its second half the instruments chase each other, building volume and speed until it all halts abruptly.

Finally, Saint John stretches out over eight and a half minutes, shifting shape repeatedly: part hymn, part dirge, part symphonic rock movement. It feels like IVY placing their flag in the ground, expansive and unpredictable.

With Hush, IVY show themselves as a band unafraid of scale or ambition. Their songs are brooding and cinematic, their lyrics veer from the intimate to the prophetic, and their sound welds prog-metal grandeur with art-rock unease. Guitars carve the darkness, bass grounds the turbulence, drums propel the drama, and violin cuts through with moments of eerie intensity, together shaping the album’s atmosphere. The vocals land like another instrument, shaping the atmosphere as much through tone and texture as through words. Together these elements bind the record, giving it its emotional resonance. At times there is risk of self indulgence, but the reward is an album that feels larger than the sum of its parts.

John Bradbury