EP Review piglet - seven songs

Innovation, emotionality, and anthemic intimacy sprawl across this seven-song set that congeals dream-pop, post-rock and grunge into one sumptuous captivation. Opener ‘mill’ straddles caroline-esque orchestral atmospherics with halcyon indie-pop melodics. ‘discreet’ blossoms from acoustic nakedness into full-blown ethereality, while the heavy-as-fuck ‘oan’ bites and rivets, battling against breakdown and bedlam in bonfires of distortion and overdrive. Perforated throughout by Belfast-born piglet’s defiant, thickly-cut vocal, the EP discusses issues of mental health, substance abuse and the nagging search for self-identity with diaristic frankness: “Mesmerised by the thought of being sober like it’s no big deal,” he confesses, for example, on ‘oan’. The undoubted cream of the crop here comes with the brutalising and tender majesty of ‘it isnt fair’. An arena-sized jewel addressing the injustices faced by trans people in the British healthcare system, it’s the apogee of his achievement on ‘seven songs’: bridging the caustic with the tender, the epic with the everyday, piglet brings an urgent voice for uncertain times.