Flesh Cherub Shares Drowning In The Expanse Of Looking Up EP

Flesh Cherub, real name Liam McVay (they/them) – AKA Naarm/Melbourne’s bard of brooding anguish – today shares new EP Drowning In the Expanse of Looking Up via upcoming indie label Crossing House (Shock Corridor, Dumbhead).

Alongside the release comes a music video for focus track, 'Set Me Free'. Inspired by doomy Brazilian folk music from the 70s, ‘Set Me Free’ is a desperate plea for peace after another restless night of being unable to sleep. Shot and edited by Wil Normyle, the clip – filmed in the biting cold of the Mornington Peninsula – centers on the literal and metaphorical act of treading water: the exhausting struggle of staying afloat while drowning in a spiral of regret and past mistakes.

On Drowning In The Expanse of Looking Up, McVay smears together punk, folk and country for a collection of songs swaggering and wrenching in equal measure, that grapple with how one’s past is inescapable. “It's about trying to move forward with your life, but struggling because everything is tainted by who you were before. It also touches on spiralling anxiety, and how those plummeting thoughts can drown you in a kind of cosmic ocean” they say. In the same manner that personal history haunts and loops, McVay's songs are ghostly, cyclical lamentations that stay with the listener long after they’ve been played. Anchoring the EP is McVay’s devastatingly baritone, that crackles and bellows across the record’s five, singular tracks. The EP was recorded and mixed by Andrew Huhtanen McEwan (who also played bass and drums) with contributions on pedal steel by Pierce Morton.

Drowning In The Expanse of Looking Up begins with two songs that serve as a retort to the cliches offered to those struggling with sobriety and their mental health. Opener ‘Relax, relapse’ is a sprawling, stripped-back howl into the void, pairing McVay’s booming vocals with ethereal steel guitar, where McVay picks apart the trite recommendations of others. “When you’re going through a difficult period, someone will always suggest, have you tried going for a walk? Or have you tried changing your mood? It’s just about the dark humour of those moments, and the yearning to go back to substances. And the things you will try – like white noise, Reiki – to plug the hole” they say. Lead single ‘Blind’, met with praise from Rolling Stone Australia, to Be Magazine, 3RRR, 4ZZZ, Austin Town Hall and more, is a gloomy torch song of inner crisis, suicidal impulses and angels, that riffs on the fallacy of the adage ‘time heals all wounds.’ It’s a smouldering track that combines gothic country with downtempo distortion.

The later half of the EP sees McVay wrestling with how their inner turmoil has shaped their relationships and sense of self. ‘I Don’t Want to Remember Everything’ is, as the track suggests, a despairing request that McVay be freed from the pains of the past, which culminates in explosive, battering drums by Andrew Huhtanen McEwan. ‘Fmtide’ is a stretched-out, glam-rock jaunt about gender dysphoria and using intimacy as a crutch. “‘F*ck me till I don’t exist’ is a line I nicked from MacKenzie Ward’s book Reverse Cowgirl. This song is about trying to patch up a wound with a temporary fix” says McVay. The EP ends with ‘Cyanide Spit,’ a menacing country-western song about not thinking before one speaks. “This one is me just coming to terms with my tongue becoming a weapon I lose control of.”

Drowning In The Expanse of Looking Up is the follow-up to McVay’s debut Doom Groove, an atmospheric EP of fringe folk and alt-country, released independently in 2024 to acclaim from Forte Magazine, RTR and 4ZZZ, among others.

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