Fuses

A record that’s been beguiling me since it first came into the inbox, the debut from Fuses brings together RSTB favorite Craig Fahner (Motorists) with Swedish drummer and bassist Moa-Linn Rosenlöf (Orkan, Spela Död). Diverting from the fraught tension and power pop elasticity of Motorists, the duo embraces some of the hallmarks of ‘70s folk and pop while never quite getting stuck in the ruts of nostalgia. The record slows the pace and opens the pair to the pastoral, an air that comes through most sweetly in their entwined vocals. Shades of country steel pass over patches of twang. A hearth-worn humbleness hangs its head like Gram and Emmylou on “Idle Heart” and dives into the clouds kicked up by Beachwood Sparks on “Aniline.” The band’s habit of eschewing one particular era gives the record it’s timeless sway, set drifting between influences that overlap one another in linen-light layers.

It’s a common turn these days shifting from pop pounce to the calm countenance of country, and honestly one I’m always here for, but the duo don’t put on their persona lightly. There’s a genuine love for the genre at the heart of the record, a feeling of digging deep into personal passions that turns the shift from costume into curation. Fahner seems as comfortable courting heartbreak in the high plains as he does bounding through power pop’s halls. The pair prove adept at building atmospheric marvels between the two of them; doused in organ, wrapped tight in strums, and constantly cocooned in their vocal interplay. As the lonesome wail of a harmonica curls around their fogged delivery, beautifully melancholy, entrancingly earthen in the face of their gossamer glow, the band tightens their grip on the otherworldly aura they’re courting. Fuses offer another one of 2026’s sterling debuts, and one that begs for the band to dig in deeper and explore the country cool that’s billowing out of Sawdust in the Transmission even further.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.