Charlotte’s own Motocrossed – a seven piece made up of members Blaire Fullagar, Carolyn Becht, Colin Read, AJ George, Todd Jordan, Austin Currie, and Sofie Pedersen – make sounds that make me miss the southern music scene so deeply. Recorded mostly in bedrooms and basements, you can hear the closeness in every take. It’s humid and handmade; a mosaic of rural quiet and cathartic noise. As if the fragile spaciousness of Florist met the unpredictable nature of Advance Base, it settles into the scene with a precision rarely even touched on the first try.

The opening track, “A Mouse in the Field of Our Benefits” unspools slowly, tracing a feeling of smallness into something beyond our reach. Fullagar sings with a voice that is simultaneously definitive and searching with gripping lyricism, begging questions like “were we meant to see these lives play out on screen?”. The song’s pacing is omniscient of the classic slow-motion folk – unhurried, modest, but piercing when it lands.

“Crows Come Down” is brief but essential. The stripped arrangement gives the lyric space to breathe; “something’s gotta grow, if you water at its roots”. It feels less like a studio snippet, and more of a field recording, transporting us to the vast lands under a Carolina sky. 

Songs “Drown (Country Grl)” and “Yearning” show range with restraint. The form aches with late-night jam energy, like a Hailaker track warped by the heat and eaten by the cicadas. “Yearning” certainly drifts towards dream pop, guitar melding together until the words are barely held. There’s a teetering between confession and abstraction that carries the soul of the south without leaning heavily into nostalgia – think more Dear Nora than Dolly.

Ten-minute track “Possum Dog” serves as the record’s center of gravity; messy and gorgeous. It moves like a childhood fever dream, parts shimmer, parts collapse. The moments are caught rather than built, making a statement in the strum, clash, and twang. It carries an emotional sprawl where memory feels half-erased, never gone. 

By the closing tracks – “Motocrossed” and “Under the Moon” – the band leans into the looseness. The title track feels like friends tumbling through an inside joke, while “Under the Moon” exhales everything, and leaves nothing to be unsaid. It’s patient, unresolved, and strangely comforting in its indecision.

But Motocrossed isn’t just another lo-fi diary from the south. It’s sharper – more deliberate in its unraveling. These songs don’t wander out of lost conscience, but a search for something greater. Each cracked voice, creaking bass, crawling beat – it all feels right. This is a debut that doesn’t beg for attention, and rather earns it through intimacy, through the courage to stay small in a world of high gloss and sheen. In a space that can be dominated by the artificial, Motocrossed makes the quiet, confident argument for the deliberate in music.

Motocrossed was released on October 3rd via Trash Tape Records. You can listen to Motocrossed anywhere you find your music!

Written by Arden DeCanio