As Theo Bleak, Glasgow-based musician Katie Lynch makes delicately woven folk songs and plush bedroom pop, fashioned with shivering vocals. She released her debut EP Fragments in 2022, quickly followed by a run of EPs — For Seasons, Illiad, Pain — and demo collection Heaven.Wav. Most recently, she released Bad Luck Is Two Yellow Flowers in May. With that prolific momentum, Lynch had planned on making her debut album this year. That didn’t happen. Grief had other plans. Instead, she made Bargaining: a collection of 14 haunted, unpolished tracks that snapshot her reckoning with loss and mental isolation.
On Bargaining, songs zoom in and out of focus like a camera lens trying to discern emotional clarity. Lynch described it as “a chronological mixtape,” inspired by old journals from her late uncle and “recorded at each of the rawest, saddest moments.” Fittingly, Theo Bleak’s first large project feels like a nod to her debut EP’s namesake: a quilt of scraped skin, naked shreds stitched together with tattered seams.
On opener “End Of Bargaining,” Lynch greets us with a lone guitar. It sounds like she recorded it on a front stoop, the hiss of outside traffic pushing forward the frailty of her voice. It’s an undecorated preface that subtly discloses the tense journey ahead: “It ended up sad/ But I’d do it again.” The following track, “Megan In New York,” takes a tonal 180, with chugging breakbeats and a gravelly guitar solo. The Prozac has kicked in, but the road forward remains rough and largely unpaved. That inconsistency is what makes Bargaining such a potent, gripping listen. Some moments are hazy, others startlingly clear. The project’s coherence comes in fits like a torn-up diary; things fall together as quickly as they come apart.
Ambient sounds waft through the mix, letting the outside world bleed in. Birds chirp faintly in the background on “Leave Me Alone,” as if the song briefly opens a window. “I’ll get over it this time for real,” Lynch sings, her voice buried in the back — not quite a declaration but a thought she’s testing aloud. Later, the bluntness hits harder. “What is there left to miss about me?” she asks in a chiffon croon. The response to herself is a weepy coo: “Nothing.” But it’s nearly unrecognizable as she stretches the word out, trying to alleviate its harshness. She lets it float amongst the birds and acoustic drifts of guitar. These outside world reminders anchor her in the songs and lighten their toll.
In the same vein, a chair squeak is a powerful tool — proof of the room, the moment, the body behind the voice. Its gravity brings us into the studio as the artist digs through personal wounds. It’s a sonic marker indicating immediacy and intimacy. That kind of intimacy peaks on standout “My Name Lives In Your Throat,” a spare ukulele track that slowly opens outward, Lynch’s vocals stretching skyward as a subtle breakbeat creeps in beneath them.
Lynch’s voice is a cotton-soft, delicate, always reaching outward. Even when the sentiments feel scattered, the vocals search for some kind of light. Her voice has a silky earnestness that’s not as rugged as Adrianne Lenker, as celestial as Elizabeth Fraser, or as ashen as Elliott Smith. It’s sterling silver, with a striking wildness like noted influence Jeff Buckley. Lynch’s voice is intensely pretty, but the coarseness of these recordings allow the songs to the live in their sadness. They walk empty corridors (“John”) or stand close to the edge of a train platform (“NJ Transit”), stuck in an unresolved loop and trying to find a way out.
Bargaining isn’t tidy, and it doesn’t aim for closure. What emerges is a record that feels incredibly tender, like a fresh bruise. It’s a project shaped by emotional urgency rather than intention, and it trusts that process completely. Theo Bleak offers a document that embodies grief’s shiftiness; it’s not a narrative to be resolved, but something you move through in pieces — old journal entries, cracked memories — revisiting the same thoughts from slightly different angles until they finally loosen their grip. It might not be the album Lynch planned to make, but seems like the one she needed to release.
Bargaining is out 12/19 via Full Gloom.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Niontay’s Soulja Hate Repellant Mixtape
• Oxis’ Oxis 8
• Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s Thoughts On The Future
• Lip Cream’s Lonely Rock Box Box Set
• Cemento’s Bad Dream Songs
• Hecatoncheir’s Nightmare Utopia
• CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso’s TOP OF THE HILLS
• Raq baby’s I NEVER GAVE AF (Deluxe)
