Devlin & The Harm – “Stress Dreams”
Photo by Natali Hopkins
Los Angeles-based Devlin & The Harm have just released “Stress Dreams,” the latest single from their brand new self-titled LP.
If you’ve been keeping up with our coverage, you’ll already know that we’ve been featuring everything Devlin & The Harm sends our way. And there’s a good reason for that: the atmosphere. Every release feels carefully worn-in and deeply human, built from a distinctly lo-fi palette that gives the music an immediate emotional weight. On “Stress Dreams,” that approach becomes entirely cinematic.
At the press of the play button, swelling strings and a reverberating theremin-like drone set the scene like the opening moments of a horror film scored by Lord Huron. Before long, a pair of guitars emerge — an acoustic hammers out chords while a fuzzy lead weaves melody and grit around the edges. Then the full band crashes in with a steady mid-tempo pulse beneath a sharp, staccato vocal delivery.
Like “No Havana,” “Stress Dreams” begins with its refrain, immediately throwing listeners into its emotional core. While we don’t yet have access to the full lyrics, the fragments we can make out suggest a relationship defined as much by grief as it is by love.
Devlin McCluskey, the mind behind the project, explained: “When I lost my best friend years ago, a family friend said people that go through something like that often end up falling in love with someone who also experienced tragic grief. I certainly didn't intend to, but that is what happened. Stress Dreams feels like an attempt to express the kind of shared unconscious river that shows up from time to time with my fiancé and me. And a sort of love song that's more about the things that shaped us and how we understand each other.”
That emotional weight extends into the accompanying video, filmed inside McCluskey’s childhood home just days before it was sold. Even more poignantly, the footage includes appearances from his father, who passed away last year. The result is a sense of memory and loss that hangs over “Stress Dreams” long after it ends.
We’ve really been digging the sound coming from Devlin & The Harm, and we anticipate the rest of the LP will, no doubt, live up to our expectations, even with the bar already set so high.
Connect with Devlin & The Harm here: Spotify | Instagram | Bandcamp