Knitting’s Some Kind of Heaven is one of those rare debuts that sneaks up on you — the kind of record you think you know after one spin, only to realize on the second that it’s buried its hooks deep under your ribs. From Montreal, led by Mischa Dempsey and produced with care by Scott Munro, this album might wear its alt-rock influences on its sleeve, but it doesn’t settle for nostalgia. It feels like someone taking familiar blueprints, tossing them in a blender, and adding a dose of lived-in truth.
Right from “Heaven,” the opening track with its brash guitar and blunt question — “Is this heaven / or its twin?” — Knitting sets a tone of uncertainty that never quite leaves you. It’s a record built on tension: the tension between yearning and doubt, between what you were and what you’re becoming, between self-understanding and the nagging sense that you might still be missing something. Dempsey’s voice often feels like a whisper in a swirling storm — hushed, intimate, but backed by thick guitar lines and pulsing rhythms that refuse to stay hushed for long.
That tension is at the heart of the band’s journey. Some Kind of Heaven wrestles with identity, transition, and the peculiar weight of being young and not yet settled in yourself. Dempsey’s lyrics hover between vulnerability and defiance — echoing that anxious space where growing up feels like losing and finding all at once. On “Green,” they confront past identities with blunt self-reflection; on “Spirit Gum,” they translate emotional meltdown into jagged riffs and explosive crescendos. There’s an uneasiness that runs through most tracks, like walking on eggshells in someone else’s house — familiar, yet fundamentally unstable.
But the album isn’t just tension and edge. There’s a pulse under everything — a rhythm that feels like both escape and grounding. When Some Kind of Heaven bursts into moments of full-on alt-rock fervor, it’s catchy and cathartic in equal measure. “College Rock Song #1” wraps nostalgia and youthful urge into a hook that feels both personal and universal. Even amid all the fuzz-laden guitars and looming angst, there’s a sense of community here, an invitation to feel alongside the band rather than be lectured to.
What makes this debut genuinely striking is how personal it feels without ever shrinking inward like a diary. Knitting manages to balance introspection with noise, breathy vocals with muscular instrumentation, and still make it all feel cohesive rather than cluttered. It’s a record about discovery — of identity, of self, of sound — and it’s honest about how messy that process often is.
Some Kind of Heaven doesn’t hand you answers. Instead, it builds a world where you can sit with your own questions a little longer — and maybe realize you’re not the only one trying to make sense of the space between here and what comes next.
