B-Side Guys

John Wlaysewski wrote “Together” after watching the body horror romance movie of the same name, which explains why a song about relationships features lines like “The living and the dead reply” and “Emotions fill my head.” The six-piece Late Cambrian operates in what they call “the tension between beauty and decay,” drawing from art-rock and post-punk to create music that feels “lived-in rather than polished, equal parts ritual and rupture.” The main riff carries King Crimson’s angular weight while the chorus opens into lush melodicism that Wlaysewski describes as George Harrison-influenced, an unlikely combination that somehow documents emotional erosion through math rock precision.

The lyrics treat stone exterior and foolish pride as physical substances: “It’s dripping off the sides I feel.” That image of pride literally leaking captures the body horror influence more effectively than explicit gore would. “Bad talking things that I believe” and “Trying not to see red again” establish the song’s central conflict between maintaining composure and acknowledging damage. The chorus refrain “There’s still a lot to love here to keep it together / But maybe not forever” undercuts its own optimism immediately, hedge words doing more work than definitive statements ever could.

Late Cambrian’s fascination with transformation extends to their compositional approach. Songs “don’t rush for resolution; they linger, crack, and reform,” which “Together” demonstrates through rhythms that lurch and lock in across Olive Hui’s vocals, Eric Zeender’s guitar, Matthew Milligan’s bass, Ben Weiss’s drums, and Gaby Alter’s keyboards. The band describes their sound as “shifting strata—patient, heavy, and unexpectedly luminous,” appropriate metaphor for music about watching blue skies fade away while needing more time to fade away yourself. Body horror works because it makes internal states external and visceral. “Together” applies that logic to relationships, treating emotional decay as something you can see dripping, something the living and dead both have opinions about, something that might hold together but probably won’t forever.