REVIEW: Trash Pillow – ‘RAW’
There are releases that flirt with politics, and then there are those that stare directly into the blast radius. ‘RAW’ is the latter, delivering a short but devastating statement that feels like a series of urgent dispatches from the edges of history, memory, and survival. Across four sharply etched pieces, Trash Pillow transform global conflict into intimate testimony, building a collection that aches, confronts, and ultimately refuses to let you look away.
The journey begins with ‘Bombs Make Her LOL’, a track that may be one of the most emotionally complex pieces you’ll hear this year. Instead of thunderous outrage, it opens with restraint, circling the idea of a father turning catastrophe into a child’s game. The music balances delicacy and dread with stunning control, allowing moments of tenderness to coexist beside distant menace.
From there, ‘RAW’ lifts its gaze into the sky with ‘Eyes On Us (It’s the Sound of a Drone)’. This track hums with anxiety, driven by rhythms that stalk rather than stride. The arrangement feels permanently watched as loops tightening like surveillance spirals. Trash Pillow brilliantly capture the psychological weight of being observed, policed, targeted; the kind of fear that never announces itself.
The EP’s emotional core may well be ‘Fellow Traveller’. This is history refracted through innocence to deliver a song that unfolds like a whispered memorial. Rather than sermonise, it lets atmosphere do the work with slow-burning melodies, ghostlike harmonies, and an overwhelming sense of lives erased before they could even begin to choose.
Closing the EP, ‘She’s From A War’ shifts the lens toward exile and endurance. This is the most openly human moment on ‘RAW’, tracing the fragile line between escape and uncertainty. The arrangement breathes with exhausted hope, with each phrase carrying the weight of borders crossed and futures postponed. It’s a quiet finale, but one that resonates long after silence returns.
What makes ‘RAW’ so striking is how seamlessly Trash Pillow bind these four narratives together. The EP moves between sparse electronics, bruised melodies, and textures that feel scorched by experience. There’s no ornamental excess here, only precision and purpose.
In an era overloaded with commentary, ‘RAW’ feels essential by nature. By naming the unnameable and humanising the unthinkable, Trash Pillow craft a work that challenges our conscience. This is certainly a release to sit with, absorb, and remember.