There’s a fine line between a love song and a breakup song. For darkwave duo Boy Harsher, the expected tropes for either can mutate over time: love songs mangled by barbed wire; breakup songs given sun-drenched, VistaVision views. Longtime creative and romantic partners Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller, who have been making music as Boy Harsher for over a decade, technically released their first breakup record in 2014: the simmering Lesser Man EP, which contained underground club hit “Pain.” Matthews and Muller recorded the project in their Savannah, Georgia, home after a whirlwind courtship, split, and eventual reunion. “Every song was very much about feeling betrayed or hurt or shook around or desiring something that’s not good for you,” Matthews recalled in a 2017 interview.

Lesser Man introduced Boy Harsher’s shadowy, sinister dance music, layering Mueller’s industrial drones, plasticky beats, and acidic synths under Matthews’ morphine-drip vocals. The band crystallized that sound on 2016 LP Yr Body Is Nothing and 2019’s Careful, accumulating a cult following along the way. On GET MEAN, Boy Harsher’s Atlantic debut and their first studio album in seven years, Matthews and Muller process the end of their romantic relationship, familial loss, and a period of rootlessness.

The spaces that GET MEAN evokes are distinct from Boy Harsher’s previous work. Releases like Lesser Man, Yr Body Is Nothing, and Careful are distinctly indoor records. Deep indoors. Most of Boy Harsher’s music sounds like it was recorded in a bunker rave buried just above the gates to Hell. There has always been a grimy intimacy to their songs—a delicious claustrophobia that made you feel like you were pressed against sweaty limbs and Matthews’ breath was tickling the back of your neck. On GET MEAN, Boy Harsher break through those confines for a more sweeping scope and ’80s pop palette—to varying results. In cuts that toy with ’80s synth-pop conventions, Boy Harsher get a little lost in repetitive melodies and studio polish. Matthews and Muller sound most in sync on the dark and dingy coldwave tracks that aren’t disguised in acid-wash denim.

Lead single “Jeans” is the least effective deviation from Boy Harsher’s darker, muckier sound. Peppy but repetitive, the song bounces along to a tinny guitar lick that only highlights how indistinguishable the verses are from the chorus. Muller punches in pedal-steel pitchbends, a ka-chinging cash register, and a digital whip! effect, but the song never blooms into anything intriguing. It feels endless and flat and a bit too long, like a stretch of highway slicing through the Midwest.

It’s no accident that several of the tracks on GET MEAN sound like they should be blaring through a car stereo. Deeming it their “road album” in press materials, Boy Harsher recorded the LP in numerous locations across the United States as well as Mexico and Italy. Matthews collected her own itinerant inspiration, motoring around the country and stopping in West Texas, South Florida, and the Pacific Northwest while metabolizing her break from Muller and a period of personal turmoil (including a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis).

The wide-open panorama is more enticing on opener “Ronny,” with its rubberized bassline, aerial synths, and Matthews’ husky voice dissipating like cigarette smoke slipping out a cracked window. There are still nods to ’80s chart-toppers here—namely glinting guitar and what sounds like a canned angelic choir—making it the most overtly pop song Boy Harsher have ever recorded. Matthews’ dusky vocals, smeared nearly to the point of disappearance, are an unsettling contrast to Muller’s production. “When he comes over/He fills you with poison,” she sings, the bitter elixir spilling from her lips. If it weren’t for Matthews’ unmistakable voice, “Ronny” and “Jeans” might not sound like Boy Harsher songs at all.

It may sound curmudgeonly, but Boy Harsher sound best in the sunless depths they’ve long called home. Nothing on GET MEAN quite achieves the sticky, hyper-tactile textures coating Careful, but tracks like “Hard Beat” and “Ice Pick (Walk Away)” feel more at home in the Boy Harsher universe. The former is thumping darkwave disco that mashes ’90s house beats with new-romantic gloom, while the subsequent “Ice Pick (Walk Away)” has Muller spitting a queasy guitar riff that Bernard Sumner might have cooked up in his Joy Division days.

Despite the duo’s turn toward pop, Matthews’ lyrics remain characteristically bleak. On GET MEAN, she seems preoccupied with themes of abandonment, self-degradation, betrayal, and a longing for recognition. Phrases like “call my name” and “call me by my name” recur, as do motifs that merge relationships, addiction, and compulsive behavior: “I can see your breath/Feel it moving through my veins,” Matthews sings on “Tough Luck (When You Don’t Call).” On the gnarled dance track “Break Me,” she whispers: “Breaking teeth cuz you’re on my mind/Couldn’t stop even if I tried.” Muller’s synth stabs sound like a malfunctioning turkey carver—the perfect accent to Matthews’ disturbed admission. Despite their foray into sunnier soundscapes, Boy Harsher shine brightest in the pitch-black abyss.