Mandy, Indiana – Urgh (Sacred Bones) – They’re all flipping crazy man. Do we really need to do this? Honey, is that you? Check, check, is that you? We’ve been waiting for this one for a while, new material from Manchester rather than some place in Indiana called Mandy. Do we really need to do all this? I mean does vouz need this from us? They are sounding very much like Mandy, Indiana should sound, and that’s the first vital thing here; they sound exactly like you want and expect them to sound yet you never quite know what they’re going to sound like or where they’re going to be going next, all you really know is you know you are going to want to go with them.

The very French sounding band from Manchester, the one with the very American sounding name, haven’t let us down here, sometimes – most of the time actually – you kind of expect a band to lose that thing, or at least to water that thing down, that thing that excited you about them in their early days, that turned you on to them. Most bands let you down in the end. If anything Mandy has upped things, oh Mandy, when you came and you gave without taking, this will kiss you and stop you from shaking.

Life Hex sound like it might be something Gazelle Twin might seduce us with, Ist Halt Us sounds menacing or at least sinister before it bursts into another rush that needs to take us somewhere over there.

I think I would, yeah,  Sicko! (feat. billy woods) is indeed sick, no, not in the way the kids use the word, if indeed the kidz still do? Billy is rapping all over it, sick sick sick. Does that bit sound a bit Death Grips? It goes, it goes, it goes, where are we now? Sick? I’ll ask her, they’re all flipping crazy man. 

Urgh is one of the albums we were looking forward to this year, certaily one of the albums we’re going to thinking about when it comes to reckoning the year up, if we make it that far that is, this is a rather messed up world, messed up times, all bets are off and you feel that on Urgh, you feel that sense of what the hell next and at the same time, somehow, they manage to make you feel that we might just get through it all.

Says here that “for Mandy, Indiana, the truth is the only way through. On their Sacred Bones debut Urgh, the four-piece comprised of vocalist Valentine Caulfield, guitarist and producer Scott Fair, synth player Simon Catling, and drummer Alex Macdougall are a force of uncanny nature, grafting together a record that is as much a call to action as a parlay into oblivion and transcendence. Across the ten tracks, the band interpolate their own unconventional language into a mantra for self-determination and resilience, forging a template for a brighter future before it fades to black”

And yeah, a call to action, what shape that action should take this time though is anyone’s guess? Who the hell knows? Who the hell knows about anything? What do I know? Besides not quite being sure about the album artwork, I know I like absolutely everything about this album, I think I like it even more than the last one, I really really liked the last one and yes, they have expanded their far-reaching sound. Most of the lyrics remain in Valentine Caulfield’s native French, besides the one track in English, that Frenchness only adds to everything, her language is universal, theirs is, her voice is an istruments alongside all the others, a weapon; the emotion cuts as much as the intrigue, as much as the glorious intensity of it all. 

Every moment works, not a moment of filler, Urgh is lean, maximalist yes, never overweight though, not a moment that isn’t crucial and honey, is that you? 

Apparently during the three ten hour days of the recording process there were no tracks left on the cutting room floor. This is a sharp album, a thrilling experience, something that’s for the sake of clarity; a challenge as well as an invitation, it is a right here and now album and final track I’ll Ask Her is a just right ending, a “deliberate directness calling out toxic boy’s club culture”, a real fuck your boys club moment; it is indeed something that you feel runs through the whole of the album, she is properly front it all, it is as uncompromising as Mandy Indiana always have been, it is as thrilling as they always have been, as thrilliant if you wish, it is an album that matters when so so many albums really don’t.

I think you get the drift here. 

This band matters and this might just be Mandy, Indiana’s best album so far, actually, no might just be about it. Urgh is affirming, cathartic, it is a call to arms, chalk this one up as a win for art and the force for good that art is… (sw)   

Links: Bandcamp / Facebook / Instagram / Urgh Linktree / Sacred Bones

Urgh is released on 6th February 2026.