Eamon Blog

Today's Shelf Pull: Boy Harsher, Get Mean

Twelve tracks, with room beyond the hurt

Boy Harsher’s Get Mean begins from loss without making loss its only destination. Read the full story from Kilmorna in Listowel.

Boy Harsher’s Get Mean takes grief and relationships as its subjects, with recovery somewhere in the frame. That last part matters. An album about hurt need not treat hurt as a permanent address, even when its title looks ready to argue with the neighbours.

The edition here is a single 140g black vinyl LP on Atlantic, scheduled for release on 18 September 2026. There are twelve tracks. Those are useful particulars, but the more interesting invitation is to follow a record whose starting point need not become its destination.

For our Listowel shelf pull, that is the thread worth keeping hold of: loss, then the possibility of renewal. Not a promise that everything gets tidied away. More the thought that a difficult feeling can have company without being asked to leave immediately.

This is a guide to approaching the album, not a report of a full playback. The catalogue identifies an electronic and coldwave setting, but that does not establish a particular drum sound, vocal treatment or tempo. Those details belong to the listening, rather than to an imaginative reading of the sleeve.

Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller bring these subjects into a twelve-song sequence that opens with Ronny and closes with Bleed. Keep those two positions in mind when listening. An opening introduces the terms; an ending can leave them intact, turn them over, or refuse to settle them.

Between those bookends, the catalogue places personal loss alongside relationships and recovery. It is worth resisting the urge to make each song illustrate just one of those headings. Feelings rarely queue that neatly, and a running order can put apparently separate concerns into the same room.

A practical first pass is to hear the advance tracks, then return to the complete sequence. Listen for what changes when a song has neighbours. The difference may be in your attention rather than in the song itself.

The early stretch runs from Ronny through Jeans and Break Me to Tough Luck (When You Don't Call). On paper, there is a movement from short names and objects towards a more explicit relationship situation. That is an observation about the titles, not a claim about the stories inside them.

Faulty and Coming Home occupy the fifth and sixth positions, followed by Hard Beat. That places Coming Home near the middle of the running order, rather than at its finish. A title suggesting return does not, by itself, tell us that the emotional journey has reached safety.

When listening through that passage, pay attention to the joins: whether a pulse carries your ear forward, whether space opens between phrases, whether the next entrance feels abrupt. These are questions to bring to the music, not sound descriptions borrowed from its genre tags.

Ice Pick (Walk Away) follows Hard Beat, with Ivy's Spiral next. The titles offer different shapes of departure and movement, but leave their musical handling open. Let the songs complicate those first impressions. A track name is a signpost, not a set of instructions.

Pray 4 Me, Falling and Bleed form the final three titles. Their placement gives a listener a specific stretch to revisit after the first complete play. Ask whether the sense of an ending comes from the words, the musical pacing, or simply knowing that the sequence is nearly over.

The useful thing about the stated theme of renewal is that it does not require us to read a cheerful ending into that last title. Recovery and resolution are not interchangeable. Leave a little room for an album to stop without pretending that every question has been answered.

Get Mean offers a clear reason to spend time with the whole sequence: its concerns include both the wound and the possibility of living beyond it. Neither needs to cancel the other. That tension is enough to make an attentive listen worthwhile.

The black vinyl format gives this edition its straightforward physical identity. It makes no promise about what the music will do for you. Better to arrive with curiosity than with a job you expect the record to perform.

Start with what is available to hear, then give the twelve tracks their order. Notice what stays with you afterwards. There is no need to decide everything on the first pass.

On the shelf today:

Boy Harsher - Get Mean

LP, 2026

Electronic / Ambient

EUR 28.99

Available from The Kilmorna Collection, Listowel

Buy or reserve: https://www.thekilmornacollection.com/vinyl/boy-harsher-get-mean

Buying vinyl records in Ireland: https://www.thekilmornacollection.com/vinyl-records-ireland

On the shelf today

Boy Harsher - Get Mean

LP / Electronic / Ambient / 2026

EUR28.99 / Available now

Order / Reserve