“I don’t believe in runner’s high or reading leaves,” Genevieve Poist declares. Virginia Creeper’s singer-guitarist isn’t interested in such ephemeral, unproven phenomena. A much heavier follow-up to folksy 2024 LP People Love the Dallas Cowboys Because They Want to Love Themselves, new EP GOBLN7 focuses instead on what Poist knows is real – what she can see, what she can feel. In “Runner’s High,” which moves from slow opening chords to a Zack Wiggs-provided pedal steel coda, that’s a “lightning bug on a burnt-out string of lights.” On walloping single “O”s Fan,” about a Baltimore buff who hates the drive-through and loves the Superman ride at Six Flags, it’s a “Bible verse on the back of an 18-wheeler.” The vocalist’s Southern mise-en-scène recalls the vivid imagery of fellow alt-country slinger Karly Hartzman of Wednesday – as do her and guitarist Aaron Arguello’s self-described “pastoral sludge” soundscapes, made more ominous in “Fly Eagle Fly” with Michelle Ayoubi’s creeping bass. Closer “Log Flume” feels lighter. Guitar echoes and Kyle Dugger’s watery drum machine befit another amusement park memory, when “you got soaked and the Celtics won.” The project’s shortest, final track ends abruptly as the singer affirms, “I remember clearly just how I felt.” GOBLN7 ensures we feel it too.
Virginia Creeper
GOBLN7 (Hybrid Records)
This article appears in July 25 • 2025.
