Scheduled for release on February 6th 2025, URGH, the new album from Mandy, Indiana has been shared with lead single Magazine and a tour across Europe next year with UK shows in London, Leeds and Glasgow.
Pre-order the album HERE.
Following their acclaimed 2023 debut, i’ve seen a way, URGH finds the band expanding their far-reaching sound with each member – vocalist Valentine Caulfield, guitarist and producer Scott Fair, synth player Simon Catling, and drummer Alex Macdougall – actively taking part in the songwriting process.
A force of uncanny nature, grafting together a record that is as much a call to action as a parlay into oblivion and transcendence, across ten tracks, Mandy, Indiana interpolate their own unconventional language into a mantra for self-determination and resilience, forging a template for a brighter future before it fades to black.
Now Signed to Sacred Bones, and co-produced and co-mixed by Fair and Daniel Fox of Gilla Band, much of URGH was written during an intense residency at an eerie studio house in the outskirts of Leeds and recorded across Berlin and Greater Manchester.
The process was shaped by adversity, with both Caulfield and Macdougall undergoing multiple rounds of surgeries in the same time frame as the album was being written and recorded. The harrowing experience and the exhaustion of their respective recoveries bleed into the surreality of Caufield’s writing, blurring the line between inner turmoil and external chaos.
Although there are still undeniable ‘bangers’ across the album, from the bristling techno of Cursive to the frazzled rap of Sicko! featuring billy woods, URGH feels hewn with precise cinema. Fair and Macdougall explain that ”a lot of the record is a remix of itself,” a cohesion of the band’s aptitude for collaging sounds and ideas that could operate as a film score or an industrial club night.
Whereas i’ve seen a way drew from escapism, URGH (even from the reactive nature of the title alone) belongs in the physical world, and the artwork by the artist Carnovsky, featuring an anatomical illustration of Andreas Vesalius, underscores the record’s visceral confrontation with the body and its limits.
URGH is deeply personal, yet also reflects the violent, fractured state of the wider world as Caulfield’s lyrics grapple with assault, systemic indifference, and the omnipresence of pain. While most of the lyrics are in her native French, the emotional clarity cuts through regardless of language. Caulfield still uses her voice as a distorted instrument and a weapon, oscillating between equal parts playful and eviscerating, showcased on today’s single, Magazine.
”Magazine is the expression of the frustration and deep-seated violence I felt while attempting to recover from being raped,” Caulfield explains. ”Just like most victims of sexual assault, I will never get justice, and just like most perpetrators, my attacker will never be punished. My therapist encouraged me to channel my anger into something productive, so here it is: my primal, screaming call for retribution. It is the only way I will ever get to say to my rapist: you hurt me, so I’m going to hurt you.”
The throbbing siren-sound of the song finds the band garnering drama from the juxtaposition of quiet moments and explosive commotion as Caufield sings in French: ”Abandon / All hope / Because tonight / I’m coming for you.”
For Mandy, Indiana, the truth is the only way through. In 2025, the ability to make art that is seen and heard is its own form of protest, and directly addressing these issues is its own reclamation of power and strength in solidarity. URGH is a cathartic first step toward healing and a refusal to let the conversation die.
Check out the accompanying visualiser for Magazine, directed by Stephen Agnew.
URGH Tracklist:
1. Sevastopol
2. Magazine
3. try saying
4. Dodecahedron
5. A Brighter Tomorrow
6. Life Hex
7. ist halt so
8. Sicko! (feat. billy woods)
9. Cursive
10. I’ll Ask Her
Tour dates:
Wed 25 Mar – London, UK – Heaven
Fri 27 Mar – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
Sat 28 Mar – Glasgow, UK – Room 2
Wed 8 Apr – Dunkirk, FR – Les 4 Ecluses
Thu 9 Apr – Paris, FR – Petit Bain
Sun 12 Apr – Cologne, DE – Bumann&Sohn
Tue 14 Apr – Copenhagen, DK – Huset
Wed 15 Apr – Berlin, DE – Urban Spree
Thu 16 Apr – Hamburg, DE – MS Stubnitz
Fri 17 Apr – Tilburg, NL – Roadburn
Sat 18 Apr – Rotterdam, NL – Motel Mozaique
Mandy, Indiana | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp
Photograph | Charles Gall ©
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