Style: Progressive rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Dear Hunter, Bent Knee, Genesis
Country: United States
Release date: 24 November 2025

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Some prog albums are like epic films: sweeping in scope, vividly plotted, and perfectly crafted to whisk the listener away through time, space, and the folds of the human psyche, with evocative storytelling grand enough to rival any Hollywood blockbuster.

Chasm, the sixth album from Philadelphia’s The Tea Club, is none of those things. Instead, with an average track length under four minutes, I’d liken it to the weird compilations of short films produced by the National Film Board of Canada—standouts of my childhood media consumption which alternately delighted me, baffled me, and occasionally gave me nightmares. Less a cohesive narrative than a series of vignettes, Chasm is a whimsical, intriguingly anachronistic synthesis of Genesis-era retro prog rock heritage with the off-kilter indie spark that defines much of the modern scene.

Sashaying out of the gate with the crunchily dissonant, rhythmically lopsided “Little Soldiers”, Chasm offers up angular, mischievous tonal structures, like some kind of eccentric cousin tracing relations to both the lushly lyrical The Dear Hunter and dissonant darlings The Mercury Tree. Sometimes the comparisons write themselves, as in “A Small and Passing Thing”, whose dreamy melodies and devotional, far-off vocals call to mind the Blue EP of TDH’s The Color Spectrum. Elsewhere, “Low and Lonely” is more of a mélange, dialling up the dissonance before careening into the zaniness of a Bent Knee-like instrumental interlude.

Floating above the instrumental fracas are crisp, reedy tenor vocals from brothers Daniel and Patrick McGowan. The two are equally capable of piercing through the cacophony as well as elegantly headlining Chasm’s more understated moments, like the tender and bite-sized “Quicksand”. There, the vocals stack up simple and tidy in triple octaves backed only by acoustic guitar, pulling back before the track can be sucked into the trap of schmaltziness. Even the shortest tracks manage acts of miniature world-building, each one colourfully painting its own scenery.

The Tea Club’s apparent penchant for keeping their listeners guessing is underpinned by Daniel Monda’s¹ drumming. The rhythms themselves sound almost anxious, as if they’re tugging at their sleeves and shifting constantly in keeping with the changing and irregular time signatures, but always insistently pushing forward. The other instruments play off this instability, as with the agitated, cacophonous guitars that spin out over a hastening tempo in “Vineyard”. A playful off-and-on flirtation with various electronic elements also pops out occasionally on Chasm. The heavily distorted guitars on “Silicone Sally” sound like something out of an 8-bit video game soundtrack, while the stress-inducing spoken-word ending of “Get the Bullet” plays like a trippy collage of glitched-out voices. It’s an intriguing dimension that I’d like to see The Tea Club incorporate even more.

As Chasm’s varied vignettes swirl in and out of focus, a somewhat inconsistent mix contributes to a sense of whiplash. Even the volume difference between softer and more rambunctious tracks is pronounced: the beginning of “Go to Hell” almost makes me knock over my tea after the contemplative, delicate “The Bell Ringer”. In the same vein, though Jamie Wolff is credited as providing both cello and bass on Chasm, I’m not able to identify which tracks feature the cello, so it’s either under-mixed or The Tea Club just forgot to remove it from the liner notes of a previous album.

Though Chasm’s listless shifts are sometimes disorienting, the commotion subsides on album closer “The Lunar Eclipse”, where the jumpy rhythms and instrumental brouhaha finally stabilize into a simple waltz tempo. Crystal-clear vocals glide over the arrangement, as though The Tea Club are dimming the lights after a particularly animated séance. It’s a lovely, gentle end to the album, proving that all the zigzag rhythms and fragmented detours don’t distract from the band’s instinct for cogent, emotionally resonant songwriting. Chasm may not offer the sweeping narrative arc of a prog epic, but therein lies its charm. It’s a cabinet of curios; an anthology of eccentricities; an idiosyncratic bough on the sprawling family tree of modern prog rock. And just like those weird NFB reels from my childhood, Chasm lingers not because it leads you on a single grand journey, but because each miniature leaves behind its own unmistakable afterimage.

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Recommended tracks: The Bell Ringer, Go to Hell, The Lunar Eclipse
You may also like: The Mercury Tree, Smalltape, Rikard Sjöblom’s Gungfly, Frutería Toñi, Good NightOwl
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

The Tea Club is:
– Daniel McGowan (Vocals, electric & acoustic guitars, programming
– Patrick McGowan (Vocals, electric & acoustic guitars, programming)
– Joseph Dorsey (Keyboards, programming)
– Jamie Wolff (Bass, cello)
– Daniel Monda (Drums, percussion)

1. Brother of Thank You Scientist mastermind Tom Monda. ↩︎