Greg Mendez - Beauty Land - CASSETTES

Greg Mendez has always been an economical songwriter - he wields restraint and simplicity as tools, the core of his songs sharpened into simple, cutting truths. On Beauty Land, his new album and debut LP for Dead Oceans, we're guided by a wry but forgiving narrator, an underdog who has learned to balance cynicism and faith. These songs are self-effacing without self-pity, carefully constructed altars of imperfection channeled through pop melodies, shimmering but urgent guitars, and a voice that reaches for choir boy innocence.The bulk of Beauty Land was recorded directly to tape, almost entirely alone in Mendez's makeshift home studio in Philadelphia - a small room with no natural light. It's his first full length since his unexpected self-titled breakthrough in 2023, which was a slow burn success following 15 years of writing and recording music in relative obscurity between Philly and New York. Beauty Land picks up where we left off three years ago - plumbing the depths of grief, love, and addiction - but it's intense, quiet clarity shows Mendez at his songwriting best.Parts of Beauty Land feel like a lucid dream, dented characters carve their way through a world that's cartoonish and warped - the broken-clock march of InchI Wanna Feel Pretty,Inch the chiming toy piano on InchGentle Love.Inch InchMary / DreamingInch begins as a sparse, finger-picked lament before cutting abruptly to a deflated, Beach-Boys-but-make-it-fucked-up resolution that brings both melancholy and joy; a sense that all things can be true at once. None of the 14 tracks here break three minutes, but they tell stories that span lifetimes.Death floats through the record, whether it appears as a memory or a threat. Everything feels precarious. There's a fragility to how these songs are built the way the funeral organ hits alongside the morphine on InchLooking Out Your Window,Inch the devastating si