There is something wonderfully restless about Gwen’s debut album, “A Cure That Will Save the Both of Us.” The Manhattan band has no interest in playing it safe and stretches their first full-length into an hour-long, deliberately cinematic experience where art-rock, electronic production and melodic songwriting constantly bleed into one another. The band describes the record as a journey through memories and through the different “cures” people convince themselves will save them.
The album opens with “The High,” an instrumental number with gentle washed-out guitars setting the atmosphere before the record moves deeper into its recollections.
STREAMING:
https://open.spotify.com/album/0f7Xu5dvzph8HJjjasFpYC?si=hrDx9eUjQzWBwuMyeChx2g
VIDEO FOR “CIGARETTE”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcaS-MK7ds4
VIDEO FOR “ATHENA”:
https://youtu.be/E-oim1_ztG4?si=JLW4rdjBnpKXL17L
“Keep Me Alive” arrives shortly afterwards as a counterweight, exploring themes of mental illness and medication. “Cigarette” follows with equal emotional weight, and an incredible vocal performance filled with anguish.
TRACKS
1. The High
2. Five Miles West
3. Keep Me Alive
4. Cigarette
5. Cryogenic Chamber
6. Interlude
7. Cross
8. Athena
9. Love Is Torture
10. Helmet Song Pt. I
11. Helmet Song Pt. II
12. The Low
But it is the album’s second half that most strongly establishes Gwen’s ambitions. The band explores a variety of rock styles on “Athena,” absolutely justifying the track’s runtime of nearly nine minutes. Nearly the entire spirit of the record is captured in this track as Gwen increasingly allows atmosphere, electronics and guitar noise to compete with conventional songcraft.
The album comes full circle, starting with “The High” and ending on “The Low,” which pulls the listener out of the dream and back toward a harsher reality. The existential dread of the lyrics is matched by the muted instrumentation as the band opts for a purely acoustic arrangement. Even without turning the album into a literal narrative, the movement from high to low suggests that whatever salvation Gwen is searching for across these songs is temporary.
The excess of A Cure That Will Save the Both of Us is where some listeners may struggle. But what Gwen has produced is an unusually assured statement of intent. The album is an entire world of emotion: nostalgic, unsettled, melodic one moment and engulfed in noise the next. Its fascination with imagined cures is all about documenting why people keep looking for a way to fix themselves. By the time “The Low” arrives and the dream breaks, Gwen has made that search feel messy, intimate and recognizably human.
ONLINE:
https://linktr.ee/GwenBand
https://www.instagram.com/gwenbandofficial
https://www.youtube.com/@gwenband?si=tgx9s_fb0HFwLfJe
https://gwenband.bandcamp.com/album/a-cure-that-will-save-the-both-of-us