Style: Synth pop, alt rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Crosses, Black Queen, Ulver, Deftones, A Perfect Circle
Country: Pennsylvania, United States
Release date: 19 January 2026

---

Composed of previous and current members of bands like Rosetta, Revocation, and Rivers of Nihil, New Miserable Experience sound nothing like the band you probably just imagined. Instead of the long-form explorations into technical mayhem that you’d expect from such a roster, these Pennsylvanians deliver soft and delicate synth pop cuts with a subtle alt rock edge. Make no mistake though; New Miserable Experience markets their latest Gild the Lily as anything but metal, although expectations can be a funny thing.

As soon as the first track “Heartsick” began, I was struck by NME’s similarity to Chino Moreno’s and Shaun Lopez’s †††—that’s Crosses. Beyond the obvious similarities between vocalist David Grossman’s and Chino’s slightly nasally croons, the two bands seem to be operating upon the same general ethos: they are both supergroups that see members of technical and dense acts boiling down their creative output to its most barebones and gossamer elements. Good things can come from boiling things down—bone broth for instance—but boil anything too much and you start to lose its distinct flavor. Fat emulsifies, collagen breaks down, and the resulting concoction just ain’t worth the effort. Unfortunately, this seems to have been the result with Gild the Lily.

Across its twelve tracks, Gild the Lily is immaculately presented yet ultimately hollow. The mix is pristine, the stereo field wide and breathable, every dreamy synth and dripping-in-chorus guitar line given ample room to shimmer, while reverb and delay coat the record in a tastefully unifying membrane. Even when little is happening beneath the surface, NME provide ample auditory depth. Still, despite being a very pleasant sounding album, it’s rarely compelling. This can be felt most noticeably on tracks like “Ordinary People” and “Perfect Blue,” where guitar and bass parts feel timid, largely content to shadow the vocal melodies without asserting their own identity. There are flashes of melodic intrigue across the album—mostly small sound design touches like the whistling synths of “Heartsick” or classical piano in “Ataraxia”—but, for the most part, Gild the Lily is devoid of anything I would call a hook. When a track does gain some forward momentum, like on “Payback From God” or “Perfect Things,” it tends to just as quickly dissolve into a wash of indistinct pastel ambience that slides off my mind like I slide off a greased pole. In fact, when I think back on the album, the only things I can remember are the occasional sticky vocal lines, and even that’s pushing it.

My main issue with Gild the Lily remains its extreme commitment to restraint. Grossman’s vocals are consistently held at arm’s length, rarely breaking above a mezzo-forte, and in turn never allow any sense of urgency to creep in. This approach occasionally works in the service of intimacy, but it more often exposes the limitations of the vocal performance itself. Additionally, the band’s reliance on programmed percussion further compounds this emotional distance. While electronic drums can be used as a powerful textural tool, here they tend toward rigidity, forcing songs not to evolve through tempo and dynamic shifts, but exclusively through the subtraction and addition of rather generic parts. Verse-chorus structures repeat with little variation, bridges arrive as expected, and any moment that hints at tension or contrast is quickly smoothed over.

None of this makes Gild the Lily a bad record, per se. It is competently written, expertly mixed, and pleasant enough across a single listen, however low that bar may be. Still, for a project composed of such sound musicians, New Miserable Experience have offered up little to return to and nothing that resonates.

---

Recommended tracks: Payback From God, Perfect Things
You may also like: Low Pressure System, Hiroe, Psychonaut
Final verdict: 5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Instagram

Label: Pelagic Records

New Miserable Experience is:
– Josh Kost (synths)
– Brody Uttley (guitar)
– Brett Bamberger (bass)
– David Grossman (vocals)
– BJ McMurtrie (drums)