Heartworms - Glutton For Punishment (2025)

The truly unique debut album from Heartworms—aka London's Josephine "Jojo" Orme—is an ass-shaker and a mind-shaker. It's a little gothic (not goth), a lot post-punk, and the stuff that makes underworld dance clubs go nuts. Recalling the defiance of MIA and the sexy proto techno of Soft Cell, she leads a slinky but determined charge on songs like "In the Beginning" and "Mad Catch"; her delivery, which ranges from mannered android to spear-sharp, is arch in the way of a Cheshire cat confident she is two steps ahead of you. Lines like "such misogynistic ecstasy" send shivers down the spine, evoking the danger of old Berlin (the city—but maybe also the earliest output of the band).

Orme is a diva, but there is nothing ethereal about this dance music: "Just to Ask a Dance," powered by angular New Wave guitar and disco drums, swerves and careens wildly—a thrill ride that might snap your neck. "I want to fly," Orme coos on chic, sophisticated "Warplane," quickly following it up by snarling, "Is it all real?" That song, with its almost militaristically anthemic chorus, is dedicated to William Gibson Gordon, "a Spitfire pilot who was killed in action by an Me 109 at just 20 years old," she has said. "The song ends how I imagine his falling Spitfire sounds to me, like an angel losing its extraordinary wings." She doesn't hold back, diving face-first into the fear of it all: "The hum of death, electrified/ The rats rattle in the heat of the battle." Just as vivid is "Jacked," which weaves together New Romantic melodrama, post-punk guitar needling, and the sparkly wink of electroclash to channel a scary darkness that turns out to be from within. "I've been chastised my whole life; made to feel as if I didn't belong, punished for not fitting into a perfect image of how a growing woman should be," Orme has said of the album's inspiration.

Thank goodness for those who break the mold and give us songs like "Smugglers Adventure," a multi-part epic that starts off as cold and foggy as a wind-whipped moor before building to a fever that Orme slithers her way through. A "good girl" wouldn't pant "wish you the best," then go into a wild, free-wailing sonic meltdown as Orme does on "Celebrate," delivering pure catharsis. And when she does admit to being "so shy it pains me to ask you to save me" or even to such mundanity as "Go to the gym, cry over him," on the title track, you'll breathe a sigh of relief when it switches from sweet singer-songwriter acoustic to electrified, arsenic-and-old lace coyness. Orme is the badass we all need right now.