If Dream Nails’ second album ‘Doom Loop’ felt like a Molotov cocktail lobbed at an already burning world, ‘You Wish’ is the morning after: eyes stinging, coffee in hand, trying to work out what survives in the smouldering rubble.
The band’s third record arrives amid internal recalibration — bassist Mimi Jasson has stepped into the lead vocal role of the now-trio — and that sense of transition seeps into almost every groove. This is a record situated between righteous fury and what comes next, which isn’t exactly clear.
It opens with The Only Way Out Is Through, a mantra-jam, all loose-limbed west coast sway and bullish insistence. It’s an oddly calm way to begin, but it signals a shift immediately: anger is no longer the engine, curiosity is.
Across the album, Dream Nails trade riot grrrl for something more playful and porous, flirting with indie, post-punk and flashes of grunge without fully committing to any one sound.
The clearest articulation of the album’s central tension comes on This Is Water, a slow-building meditation that balances mysticism with material reality. Jasson’s vocal is softer, more conversational, and it suits the lyric’s push and pull between belief systems — spirituality rubbing up against science, hope against hard fact.
Elsewhere, Organoid snaps that calm in two, delivering the album’s sharpest moment: a wiry, funk-leaning critique of tech power structures that briefly recaptures the serrated edge of that riot grrrl sound. Not everything here lands with the same force. The lighter, freewritten approach occasionally leaves songs feeling like sketches rather than statements, and there are stretches where momentum drifts rather than builds. You miss the sustained punch that once made Dream Nails feel genuinely confrontational.
Still, there’s something versatile and admirable about ‘You Wish’. It’s a transitional, inquisitive record, willing to sound uncertain if that’s what honesty demands. At times frustrating, often intriguing, it suggests a band in the middle of becoming something else — not fully reformed, but very much alive.
Dream Nails Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Tue February 17 2026 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE Zerox
Wed February 18 2026 - GLASGOW Hug and Pint
Sun February 22 2026 - MANCHESTER Deaf Institute - Lodge
Fri February 27 2026 - BRISTOL Louisiana
Sat February 28 2026 - BRIGHTON Green Door Store
Sun March 01 2026 - NORWICH Voodoo Daddys
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