Alternative
Atlantic Records · 18 September 2026
«Get Mean» is Boy Harsher’s first album for a major label, Atlantic Records, and their first full-length since «The Runner» (2022). The duo — Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller — wrote it in the wake of their own break-up in 2024, and the record comes straight out of that: twelve tracks that turn grief into something physical and danceable.
«Hard Beat» sums it up best: a driving beat over dark synths that, whenever it pauses for breath, turns towards a Vangelis-style warble, opening the track onto more cinematic ground before closing back in on itself.
«Jeans» sits in near-opposite territory: elastic, slide-tinged guitar that sounds almost western, bright synths, and lyrics about leaving home and selling off a pair of jeans — the most openly new-wave Boy Harsher have ever sounded.
In between sits «Ivy’s Spiral», a forty-second sketch built from a single ambient drone, while «Ronny» opens the record with a light, flirtatious synth line. It’s precisely this stylistic range — from western to dark synth-pop to ambient — that makes «Get Mean» hard to sum up in one sentence: each track stands strongly on its own, but the record as a whole moves in fits and starts, without a single thread tying it all the way through.
The climax comes with «Bleed», which opens in slow motion and closes the record on its most openly emotional note of the twelve.
Rating: 7.5/10