SINGLE REVIEW: Dissolved Girl - Granite State
On ‘Granite State’, Dissolved Girl stretch their limbs in new directions while keeping their trademark sense of tension and atmosphere firmly intact. With a backdrop of glitchy trip-hop unease and steadily boiling rock instrumentation, it’s a track that plays with its pacing like a seasoned dramatist — soft-laced one minute, searing the next. Vocal harmonies float just above the tremble of pedal-tone guitars, like fragile truths whispered through a haze of distortion. It’s immersive, disquieting, and beautifully constructed.
The song opens with a low-slung, hypnotic bassline that loops like a restless thought. From there, the drums shuffle in, equal parts loose and deliberate, giving the track a slightly off-kilter gait that feels unnervingly real. That creeping sense of instability reflects the song’s subject matter: power, corruption, and the ways entire communities slip through history’s cracks. It’s not shouty or heavy-handed — the rage here simmers, calculated and cerebral. The Chomsky samples — yes, that Noam Chomsky, one of the most important linguistic philosophers and political commentators of the last century — aren’t just clever embellishments, but serve as textured commentary, bringing weight and gravitas to the track’s quieter moments.
And then there’s that solo. Guitar solos might be out of vogue in some circles, but Dissolved Girl don’t care. It slices through the track with fiery purpose, not self-indulgent but emotionally dialled in — a roar of protest in musical form. That balance between delicacy and defiance is what makes ‘Granite State’ so compelling. Where many bands take up space with sheer volume, Dissolved Girl use space like a weapon — pulling back, twisting tension, then letting loose when it matters most.
This is a band with vision and intent. Their fifth single to date, ‘Granite State’ doesn't just build on their sonic identity — it pushes it outward, adding flourishes of psych-rock bravado to their introspective palette. It's both an indictment and an invitation, a call to awareness cloaked in beauty. And in a world built on distraction, there's something quietly radical about a track that asks you to stop, listen, and feel.
