TINY LITTLE HOUSES

Misericorde IVY LEAGUE

The tagline for Misericorde boasts that it chronicles Caleb Karvountzis’ “search for salvation through suffering”. That’s enough to lure in any emo worth their eyeliner, but what’ll keep them buckled in are the gristly, jacked-up pop guitars, brute-force beats and razor-sharp honesty. Three years removed from Tiny Little Houses’ debut (2018’s IdiotProverbs), Karvountzis has levelled up from a tinnie-slamming sad-boy to a cosmopolitan family man. Thus–and yes, we acknowledge how cliché thisistosay – it’s a notably matured album. Such is tangible in the gravity of Karvountzis’ songwriting, but even moreso in the band en bloc’s musicality: the riffs are bold, crunchy and calamitous but never grating or obnoxious, and the hooks, while buoyant and catchy, wield a striking emotional weight.