On her new record Engraving Of Armor, Beck Zegans explores the strange architecture of an emotional fortress through a series of songs that flash between fiery rock, experimental folk, and psychedelia. The album centers on themes of emotional defense and desire, and sings to the invisible shields we build around ourselves, the weight they carry, and those fragile moments when it all starts to unravel.
Released via Exploding In Sound Records, the nine immersive tracks on Engraving Of Armor move between confrontation and contemplation, grounded by cyclical, meditative drums, bursts of heavy guitars, and the occasional warm pulse of analogue synths. At its heart, the album digs into what it means to wear emotional armor. Zegans seeks the answer to this question through songs that touch upon longing, ambivalence, and avoidance, as well as the complicated exhilaration of falling in love–of both wanting deeply, and resisting that want at the same time.
Much of the record’s sound can be traced back to the years surrounding its creation. In lockdown, Zegans found herself gravitating toward heavier, more confrontational music, and that tonal shift reshaped her songwriting. Where earlier material sometimes leant on metaphor or distance, these songs aim for clarity and are armed with bluntness. “I got angrier during the pandemic and was listening to a lot of angrier music,” she says of this time. “I think that inspired me to not hide behind metaphors too much. I tried to be pretty frank.” The change is audible not only lyrically but in the texture of the music. Throughout, guitars push harder and harder against the rhythmic spine as the songs meet their subjects directly, each arrangement dripping with desire, hesitation, and escapism.
The creation of Engraving Of Armor also marked a major evolution in Zegans’ recording process. Rather than arriving in the studio with fully arranged songs, she built them piece by piece through collaboration with bassist and synth player Alex MacKay (Cutouts, Nation Of Language) and drummer Julian Fader (Remember Sports, Ava Luna). Each track began as a home demo of guitar, vocal, and a drum loop; writing to loops for the first time opened up a different rhythmic approach for Zegans, and it gives the songs a steady pulse that would later influence each musician’s performance. From there, she would bring the demos to MacKay, and the two would continue writing and recording layers at MacKay’s home studio in Ridgewood, Queens . Next, Fader would track drums and additional instruments, record vocals, and continue sculpting the songs’ sonic landscape at his Honey Jar studio.
The collaborators approached each song as its own universe, gradually expanding and refining each over the course of a year (all three are credited as producers). For Zegans, the method was both educational and liberating; by building each piece incrementally, the trio could pull apart the arrangements, play with the elements, reshape structures, and let the songs evolve organically. Zegans, MacKay, and Fader anchor the recordings, while Palehound’s El Kempner–whose band Zegans has been a part of over recent years–appears on two of the tracks, “Riddle” and “Woods,” adding signature flashes of expressive lead guitar.
Musically, Engraving Of Armor sits in conversation with a wide range of influences, and is equally comfortable leaning into the textural experimentation of Autolux and Sonic Youth, the intimate songwriting of Nick Drake, or the modern urgency of Fontaines D.C. Those inspirations conjure a sound that is emotionally direct, sonically adventurous, and quietly hypnotic. The machine-like drum pulse of “‘I Want You” was captured by first recording a slowed-down version, then speeding it back up again. A song about dating in New York, and how the past poisons the present, it simmers during the verses before bursting into something far noisier in its bold, expressive chorus. Elsewhere, “Love In The End Times” sings to exactly that: “a love song with mild pseudo-apocalyptic flare,” Zegans describes. Far more spacious, the track shimmers with the silver glow of a city, the woozy nature of its lyrics underlined by the synth that bubbles along just beneath the surface. These synths breach the surface on “Riddle,” an enigmatic three-minutes bristling with tension, the music turning in on itself to present a scattered, almost kaleidoscopic swirl of sound.
A sense of place also played a subtle but notable role in shaping the record. Zegans has lived in Ridgewood for seven years, surrounded by a dense ecosystem of musicians and venues. Her environment seeped into the songs, with some tracks exploring a particular form of urban self-numbing–the way a city like New York can offer endless distractions from the things people want and fear most. As she puts it in one lyric: “It’s New York / in rivers of beautiful trash we’re all hiding from the things we want too bad.” Despite the ambivalence embedded in that line, the album isn’t a rejection of the city. If anything, Engraving Of Armor reflects its sprawling magic, and the strange tenderness that comes from loving something that can also overwhelm you.
Bio: Tom Johnson
Photo Credit: Will Higgins
