The long awaited fourth Queen of Jeans album is finally here. I called their third record, All Again, a perfect record and crowned it Record of the Year before the year was half over for the 2024 Wolfys. So hard/SWEET walked in carrying a lot of my baggage. That's not fair to it, and I know it.
Here's the good news. Queen of Jeans didn't try to make All Again again. hard/SWEET, out now on Memory Music, trades the big pop-punk and rock swings for something softer, hazier, and all of one piece. This time the band co-produced with Justin Bartlett, while Will Yip moved over to mixing and mastering. You can hear the change. It's dreamier and more patient, and it's still very much them.
You know something's different within seconds. The record opens with dreamy whistles and a banjo, which is not a sentence I expected to write about this band, before the drums crash in and take over Still Learning. It's a song about growing up and finding out change never gets easier, plus the very human habit of ending something and then inviting it back over anyway. Deeply moving, and a bold way of announcing that things are different now. That dreamy, shoegaze haze carries straight into Bucks County, where some interesting electronic percussive beats slip in underneath the soft distortion and cobwebs. Miri Devora glides through her range with butter-smooth tone and precision, celebrating queer love in the place the band calls home, and she makes it sound like somewhere you'd want to be from.
The pace finally picks up on Love Like Mine, which starts out steady and comes apart slowly as the plea at its center loses its composure. Then the band pulls back again. On Go, Be, Now the drums get room to drive the song softly from underneath while Miri's airy vocals float on top. Everything is light here, but Matheson Glass's guitar texture gives it a fingerprint, so it doesn't melt into the songs around it. On a record this cohesive, that matters.
Then comes lead single Sweet Devotion, the most classic Queen of Jeans moment on the album. It has the soft grunge intro and the hushed vocals, then chord changes that land exactly where you want them to. The band stops and starts on a dime, and Miri shows off her full range without ever sounding like she's showing off. Wanting someone to stay while quietly doubting you deserve them is close to a thesis statement for this whole record. If that song is the heart of the album, Nothin' is where someone finally turns the volume up. The alt-rock edges come through hardest here, a little pedal steel is tucked into the mix, and Miri's ad-libbed hook is the kind you'll be singing in the car whether you planned to or not. Looking for connection while everyone feels further apart has rarely been this singable.
The back half is where the record gets its most dynamic. Rush opens on an introspective piano before kicking into a percussive shuffle, built around the fear that naming a relationship out loud might be what breaks it. That leads into Common Condition. The fills on this track are decorative hooks, and you'll remember them the way you remember a chorus. Add the synthy piano work that closes it out, and nothing else on the album sounds like this.
The drums keep leading the way on Wait & See, this time with a great pattern in 3/4 that gives the song a gentle sway, a waltz for slow dancing in the kitchen. Glass's guitar shimmers and the piano lines twinkle, and it might be the loveliest moment on the album. Which makes it the perfect setup for the title track to close things out the way a closer should. On hard/SWEET, floor toms drive it, Miri sings every line like she means it, and the builds keep climbing until you're somewhere up in the clouds. Lyrically, it's the heaviest hitter on the record. It's about offering to be whatever version of yourself the person you love needs, soft or tough, and how risky that offer can be. It lifts you high and doesn't drop you.
So did it top All Again? No, but honestly, it isn't trying to. The tradeoff is real. The cohesive prettiness costs some of the last record's sugar-rush energy and instant hooks, and a couple of the middle tracks take a few spins before they separate from each other. But the songs that land, land hard. hard/SWEET is the sound of a band confident enough to get quieter, and that's its own kind of growth.
