Seattle's Spiral XP are on a quest for authenticity. On the band’s debut LP, I Wish I Was a Rat, principal songwriter Max Keyes explores meaning, truth, and value under capitalism. Feeling unmoored by the ambient crush of a culture that prioritizes labor over pleasure, and data points over artistic expression, Keyes withdrew, finding solace in a new passion for songwriting. The resulting 12-song collection navigates late-twenties existential ennui and emerges triumphant, bending feedback drenched guitars into euphoric new shapes, imbued with the timeless stamp of Pacific Northwest melancholy.
In early 2020, just before the world ground to a halt, Keyes abandoned a short-lived move to Philadelphia and returned home to Seattle. The false start sparked a sort of existential crisis, and he quickly moved north to Bellingham where he’d grown up, hoping the sense of home might provide some grounding. An accomplished drummer with the acclaimed noise rock band Versing, Keyes began hammering out his own songs during this quieter time, approaching the guitar for the first time with serious intention. “It was good to have a couple of years just writing and becoming more confident,” he reflects. Spiral XP launched as a solo project in 2021 with the lo-fi and promising Drop Me In EP, quickly followed by successive EP’s It’s Been A While (2023) and TVXP (2024), a collaboration with the emerging Seattle band TV Star.
For I Wish I Was A Rat, Keyes tapped scene veterans Lena Farr-Morrissey (bass, vocals), Jordan Mang (guitar), Kyle McCollum (guitar), and Daniel Byington (drums) to expand his vision, inviting them to augment the songs as they saw fit. “They ended up taking on a life of their own,” he explains, “that's a little scary but also thrilling to me.” After moving back to Seattle, Keyes and the group enlisted producer JooJoo Ashworth (Corridor, SASAMI, Automatic) and decamped to The Unknown, the legendary Anacortes studio Phil Elverum helped construct in an abandoned church.
Recorded entirely in analog, those sessions document the band at their purest, embracing happy accidents and gritty recording artifacts. “It goes back to that search for authenticity," says Keyes, “It has a lot of limitations and it makes recording harder, but those limitations make the process so much more meaningful and deep.” Opener “Luna” pits jagged, muscular Sonic Youth riffs against an Isn’t Anything era MBV chorus, Farr-Morrissey’s delicate harmonies imbuing Keyes’ understated vocals with newfound confidence. A love song to the moon, the record's opening statement captures the feeling of overwhelming awe, wide with possibility.
“Horse Money”’s tongue in cheek opening lines “Honestly // Make money // Get a job // Industry” put the record's abstract antagonist in the crosshairs. The guitars operate in lockstep with the rhythm section, eventually succumbing to the boiling tension in glorious dueling leads. There’s a reverence for icons like Yo La Tengo, but the band sit more clearly in a lineage of influential bands from the Northwest like Broken Water, Unwound and Beat Happening.
Throughout the record, the intangible power of music serves as a North Star. Songs operate as their own living, breathing ecosystems - the lyrics, melody and arrangement all working together in service of some unseen salvation. “Window Room” packs skyward melodies and towering riffs in equal measure, bordering on slowcore but without the genre's downward gaze. Written during intentionally empty days, Farr-Morrissey (who takes lead on the song) explains the track “carries a longing for being at peace with the unknown.” On “Winter Snow,” Keyes mourns an avoidable death and wonders where we lost the collective plot.
On album highlight “Sinner,” Keyes imagines what it might be like to navigate the world with blind confidence, ultimately concluding that we’re all engaged in the same struggle: to find meaning in a culture that only equates value with profit. “I’m a sinner no big deal,” he sings with Farr-Morrissey, “Now I’m playing center field.” The laid back delivery lends every lyric a revelatory power, playful character studies that tow the line between fiction and diaristic confessions.
Whether they’re tackling murky trip-hop (“Cruel World”), whirlwind shoegaze (“Bright Eyes”), or harnessing pure noise a la The Men (“Tonight”), Spiral XP twist dread into hopeful bliss, finding peace in community and moments of simple beauty. A singular distillation of grunge, indie, and slacker rock all wrapped in the region's distinctive hue, I Wish I Was A Rat makes the compelling argument that we are more than our labor.
