Fantastic Shams - Back of My Mind (2026)

Not being a music journalist or a trained critic, but merely an enthusiast who has followed his intuition for all these years of blogging, I have finally looked into what the criteria for a good review actually are. Usually, I am probably sort of unconsciously trying to incorporate the who, where, what, and why in my posts, but how is it really supposed to be done, or does that not carry weight if you simply want to share your appreciation?

In the highly acclaimed 33 1/3 series, it turns out there is also a publication called How To Write About Music, based on interviews with 40+ experts in this field. In summary, it comes down to the following: powerful reviewing requires balancing deep technical analysis with vivid personal and cultural storytelling to explain why an album matters, avoiding lazy clichés. Ouch, that sounds challenging, but let’s give it a try, OK?

There is a specific, fidgety tension born from Midwestern sprawl and rusted-out garage dreams, and Fantastic Shams’ sophomore effort, Back of My Mind, operates entirely on this frequency. By tracking live to analog tape over a single weekend in Bloomington, the Indianapolis quartet avoids digital sterility. Instead, they preserve every rushed note and frantic tempo shift, resulting in a visceral, breathing record where angular, Wire-inspired proto-punk collides with unexpected R&B grooves and power pop strut.

Lyrically, the album anchors its sonic volatility in a profound, unsettling dread. Across eleven tracks, the band navigates the friction between fleeting optimism and paralyzing isolation, from the existential fatalism of the earworm title track to the cynical, upside-down urban decay of My Side of Town: “Everyone’s a criminal // Isn’t that a miracle?” This record doesn’t merely mimic 1970s underground aesthetics; it weaponizes that vintage, unpolished urgency to articulate modern anxieties. Capturing lightning in a bottle sometimes requires leaving the glass broken.

Hmm, that still requires quite a bit of practice for me. Fortunately, there is only one thing that really counts here, and that is that this release will keep haunting my mind for quite some time.