Harmony's Cuddle Party - Harmony Passes Away Vol. 2: Return 2 Pathetic (2026)
Artist: Harmony's Cuddle Party
Author: Sarah
Date: 01/30/2026
Listen: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
I've heard a few Harmony's Cuddle Party albums now, and from that experience I've gathered that the primary thing about a Harmony's Cuddle Party album is that you really can't know what to expect from song to song. For example, from the opening track "She Is Nice", with its repeated "She is so nice / And I want to show you" and the somewhat heavy strumming, I started to expect something creeping up on noise pop. But then the titular (subtitular?) song destroys that expectation with a jaunty tune about how "every sexual relationship [she has] is ruined". While the contrasts can be entertaining, it also prevents the album from having all that much coherence. Luckily, things do come together a bit in the second half, resulting in some of Harmony's prettiest songs yet.
For me, the heart of this album starts with "Bottle Return", a lovely folky tune sung at almost a whisper and followed up by the Ponyoak-ish (Author's Note: An album by Kleenex Girl Wonder) power pop of "Fraud". Like the opening few tracks, that's a pretty big genre swing, of course. But unlike them, these two actually come together quite nicely, such that they sound like a cohesive whole instead of a mere collection of songs. We get a similar duo of songs toward the end of the album, with the The Motifs-ish (albeit with a bit of noise!) organ-droney bedroom pop of "I Really Wanna Be Your Girlfriend" followed by the folky "Slave", in which Harmony gives us one of her most beautifully understated melodies.
All the aforementioned, of course, is with reference to Harmony. But what about the rest of the Cuddle Party? First off, we've got Kayde Hazel with "Hellnut Ranger", a song which occupies a similar position in my mind to "She Is Nice". But with Isadora Drago's "Peek A Boo", we get perhaps my favorite song yet from the band. She does a really great job of building up the intensity of this one by stretching her voice at the end of each line to the limits that that her tape recorder can handle, and pairs her clipping vocals with the addition of distorted guitar.
Overall, I probably wouldn't say this is the best album I've heard from Harmony's Cuddle Party, but it is the one I can most recommend without reservation to a general audience. The others tend to have a bit of an inside baseball vibe that might not connect to someone unfamiliar with the greater context of trans indie rock, but I'm not really picking up quite as much of that here. But most importantly, it's the first one that's really felt like an album to me, rather than a collection of songs.