November is a liminal month made even more anticlimactic in the autumn-resistant heat of Texas.
It’s a time of anticipation that, in 2024, when Little Mazarn recorded Election Results, bore far more anxious uncertainty than holiday festiveness.
“Christmas and Halloween duking it hard/ With the pumpkins and the angels out in the yard,” Lindsey Verrill sings on Election Results’ opening track, “Halloween Walk.” The song, and the rest of the EP, is distinctly timestamped in its title, doom-questioning lyricism, and autumnal atmosphere. Uncanny strings swell like a leaf-bearing breeze and warbling harmonies, filled out by experimental folk writer/guest vocalist Jolie Holland, soar like migrating birds.
On “Wild Owls,” the eponymous creatures’ call becomes a rhythmic loop while a muted bell, hanging on a neighborhood cat’s neck, jingles softly. A mechanical voice, deep and drawling as a haunted house recording, echoes Verrill’s expressive singing. Eerie themes continue in “Guided by Voices,” where a Tesla factory becomes an evil castle and the song’s namesake band members materialize as indie guardian angels. An ominously unrecognizable rendition of “Pennies From Heaven” successfully encapsulates both the nervous energy of this EP’s date of birth and this short collection’s paradoxically apprehensive and hopeful beauty.
This article appears in November 14 • 2025.
