Horsegirl is making less noise – and embracing the vulnerability that brings. The Chicago-launched trio’s second album, Phonetics On and On, is an emotive work of minimalist maxims pushing the artists to connect differently with their music.
“The first time we did this – like, just let the guitar fade out – I found myself shaking on stage,” says bassist and co-songwriter Penelope Lowenstein. “Those kinds of moments of resonating noise and silence are really frightening.”
After Horsegirl’s noisy debut album, 2022’s Versions of Modern Performance, received critical acclaim, much was made about the then-recent-high-school-graduates’ youth, their cool cachet, and their striking comfortability with performing and writing the avant garde. On their sophomore LP, released in February, the trio embraces the idea of negative space and new configurations, testing out in-studio writing with the help of Welsh-American experimental songwriter and producer Cate Le Bon (Wilco, Kurt Vile).
“We wanted to write a Horsegirl song where the guitar is super clean,” Lowenstein explains, relishing in the self-prescribed whimsy of their experimental writing process. “Then we were trying to write songs where the guitar is very percussive and the bass very melodic.”
Though Lowenstein plays bass for the group, she started out on guitar. Where she and fellow guitarist/vocalist Nora Cheng gravitated toward unique tunings and dialed-in garage-grunge tones on Versions, writing for Phonetics found Lowenstein reflecting on her own learning journey on guitar and the simple, resonant songs that fueled her early obsession with the instrument.
“I was really into the idea of: You can pick up a guitar – like the kind of guitar you start taking lessons on – and play these songs,” Lowenstein says.
Captivation with the sounds and mouthfeel of words as musical elements drove her ultramodern, movement-focused lyricism on Horsegirl’s earlier output. Shortly thereafter, she and Cheng embarked on English majors at New York University and drummer Gigi Reece followed them, publishing the zine My Boyfriend. Distance from the Chicago scene and a thrust of new experiences helped Lowenstein to think about lyrical writing differently. On this latest album, she was inspired by her own lived experience and the power straightforward statements can hold.
“We really wanted to walk the line of, can we write a song that has a more universal message to it, but says it in an interesting way?” Lowenstein says. “In the first record, I never thought about my experiences. I feel like I have an emotional connection [to Phonetics On and On] that I don’t have with the first record.”
As songwriting became a more emotional release for the bassist, she watched her audience’s cathartic connection to the music shift accordingly.
“Now I perform these songs in front of people and I watch them have an emotional reaction to it – and I do too,” Lowenstein says, with a little bit of awe in her voice. “It used to be [that] I wanted the audience to get sweaty and move and dance, and they’re not going to do that to this record. I can feel when the audience is connected and it doesn’t look like they’re dancing at all.”
For all of the growth and change Phonetics On and On holds for the trio, it still sounds undeniably like Horsegirl. The stripped-down guitar and bass melodies alternate seamlessly, like an intricately coordinated jump rope routine, leaping over and in between harmonious drum beats. Lowenstein and Cheng lean further into the nonverbal singing and descant vocal lines that made appearances on their debut.
The band had their own worries about maintaining their DIY feel in the face of their growing popularity – and the new resources that follow.
“A big anxiety of mine in the studio was that we were losing our scrappiness,” Lowenstein explains. Recording in a professional setting with the producer of their dreams – “We had literally talked about wanting to work with her in interviews as kids,” Lowenstein says – she and her bandmates couldn’t help but bite their nails, fretting over growing too far from their basement roots. Hearing their concerns, Le Bon spoke up.
“She said something that really stuck with me,” Lowenstein recalls. She paraphrases: “‘Every time you play together, there’s something super janky and weird about it. You can elegantly present this scrappiness you have together.’”
Le Bon had a point. Phonetics sounds like the work of a band that’s learning to stretch their legs and accept growth as a challenge. After spending their foundational years playing and writing music together, the art-rock trio’s strange earworm melodic structure is congruent and homespun, even as it takes on new shapes.
Horsegirl plays with Godcaster at Parish on Saturday, Aug. 9.
This article appears in August 1 • 2025.
