How much can one song hold?

This is the question I’ve been pondering in the two weeks since worrywart’s debut album hail mary baby has been out. It’s an album that seems to take this idea as a challenge, with worrywart stretching every aspect of their performance to its fullest possible extension. The group functions as though they are different gears of the same intricate machine; despite the many sonic threads woven through every song, they never clash. And in this there is a dancelike coordination, a sense of when to fall away and then come back together; to achieve feats of artistic strength while making them appear effortless.

How much can one song hold?

“red wine” is a slow burn of an opener. As the name suggests, it’s intoxicating, hypnotizing the listener with looping chord progressions and warped vocals. But while its melody glows dim and subdued at first, the song only intensifies as it progresses, with each added part bursting to life like pieces of kindling catching flame: the pop of the drum fills, the cascading guitar riffs, the incandescent vocal harmonies. It’s only about two minutes long, but by the end of it, the record is already on fire.

“pretty” is a pretty subversive name for the next track. There’s a storm brewing beneath such a soft-seeming title, and when it picks up you get to experience the full force of the group operating in tandem. The guitars in particular are striking to me here, just the sheer range and layering of sound: from the acoustic chords at the start that have this dark halo of crackling bass, to the oscillating feedback toward the end, to some ripping electric solos around the two- and three-minute mark, every instrument with strings just seems to have a little extra lightning coursing through it. But make no mistake, it’s a group effort, and this collaboration becomes apparent in moments like 1:47-2:09 where all players can be maxing out without devolving into incoherence, the way the entire trajectory of a song can turn on a dime without faltering, it’s fine-tuned balance and more than a little ambition that allows worrywart to spin so many plates without dropping any.

“eyes of man” is probably my favorite track on the album, and I find it compelling for several reasons. For one, it is masterful in its use of tension: despite the song basically grinding to a halt not just once, but twice, it is able to pick up where it left off without losing momentum—which is saying something, because it takes off at full speed from the moment you press Play. Chock-full of flourishes and ornamentations, the result is that you can really pick any point in the song, any instrument or effect to hone your ear in on, and you’ll probably appreciate some new detail that you didn’t catch the first or even second time around. But what really keeps me coming back to “eyes of man” isn’t anything technical or precise. It’s that borderline-supernatural quality music has when the feeling a song creates is somehow more than the sum of its parts. By the end of it, my chest always tightens a bit with an emotion I can’t name.

“subtle spite” is a bit of an interlude, a chance to catch your breath. It’s a short and sweet acoustic track, but it wouldn’t be worrywart without some sort of twist. In this case, that comes in the form of the occasional guitar chord wobbling in and out of tune, the odd vocal note cutting in and out as if the cell reception is bad. It’s certainly lighter and airier than the previous tracks, but it’s less easy-breezy than leery-eerie.

It then tees up “smile” with a transition so smooth that you don’t even notice you’re in a new song for the first couple seconds. Speaking of, “smile” is another bait and switch, as in both its soundscape and lyrics it delves into a more melancholic place than you might expect based on the title: if I was one of the boys I think I’d notice / if I was one of the girls I wouldn’t dance along the fence / if I was one of those confident ones I wouldn’t get so low / here we go again. Both this and the next track, “time flew”, are songs that demonstrate the group’s ability to balance heavy instrumentation with sensitive lyricism. Lines like there was a time when my fingernails were sharp enough to keep you here a while serve as a reminder: it’s easy to get so swept up in these tidal waves of sound that you take the resonance of Ryley’s words for granted. But buried beneath the spectacle of it all—the droning keys, the crashing drums, the searing guitar—is a whole lot of heart.

The back half of hail mary baby continues with “insufferably still”, which might be the weirdest song on the album; it’s objectively the spookiest. But beyond that, it is a song of extremes, ranging from vocals that are practically a whisper one second to belting the next, from a single acoustic guitar to roaring bass melded with indecipherable layers of distortion. I listen to this song and am again reminded of a storm, how even before you hear the thunder you can feel the static building in the air—you know it’s coming, but it is inevitably surprising nonetheless when lightning strikes. And in fact, a through line of this record is its insistence upon keeping you on the edge of your seat, this philosophy of maintaining dynamism to the highest possible degree .

“don’t get all nice now” is another breather between some of the heavier tracks. It was also at this point that I realized how well-paced this album is because, well, the time flew. That, and this song’s ending always catches me slightly off guard. It starts out almost poppy with some quick acoustic guitar strums, very catchy and simple in instrumentation, then a little past the minute mark, it shifts into something more haunting, longing, and—

Is interrupted by “ala”. And that sort of fits the personality of “ala”—musically, it is brash, loudmouthed, rough around the edges. Which is a curious contrast, because the chorus—you go outside if you wanna / I decline, I’d rather stay in bed—tends more toward apathy or even ennui. My interpretation (or possibly projection) is that it emulates that hollow ache you sometimes get from deep inside, of wanting to feel something but being unable to. Especially towards the end, when all these jagged sound fragments merge together into a collage of sorts, I imagine someone lying in bed awake, ruminating on their day or week or life.

The finale, “hail mary baby”, is utterly triumphant. It dovetails the album beautifully by weaving together threads of self-reference and themes from the rest of the record into a rich, 8-minute tapestry about finding your way home, resilience, and of course, love. And something unmistakable about worrywart is how driven by love their music is. You get the sense that they aren’t experimenting or pushing boundaries to such a high degree for provocation’s sake, but quite the opposite: out of dedication to their craft in the most generous sense. Because to push the limit of how much a song can hold, to elevate songs until they soar, is to uplift anyone willing to listen, and this track is absolutely a testament to that. It’s a rapturous conclusion to an album full of ups and downs, but both literally and figuratively, it ends on a high note.