Sometimes, a new album’s opening track shows you a band picking up right where they left off. In 2024, Philly indie rockers Queen of Jeans shared All Again, a record that showed frontwoman Miri Devora caught in a codependent loop with a withholding partner, closing with her admitting that, given the chance, she’d go right back. Under a minute into All Again’s follow-up, hard/SWEET, Devora swears she’s done and, in the same breath, begs the avoidant object of her affection to “come over one more time.” hard/SWEET oscillates between romance and rejection, tormented and enraptured by a love for another person that comes at the expense of loving oneself. To capture that tension, Queen of Jeans got back in the studio with All Again producer Will Yip and signed to his label, Memory Music. While All Again cycled through shades of anthemic pop-punk and folk-pop balladry, its successor is more subdued and streamlined, paring back the band’s sound into hazy dream-pop. At times it feels as though the sheer prettiness and cohesiveness of hard/SWEET comes at the expense of All Again’s frenetic energy and biting hooks, but what keeps hard/SWEET from getting too soft is its pattern of picking one guiding instrument to provide a flinty melodic center around which all other sonic elements orbit. Usually, this is Mattie Glass’ guitar, which bears no shortage of steely riffs to cut through hard/SWEET’s gauzy arrangements. The ones that herald “Bucks County” and “Wait & See” deliver precision strikes amid the swirl of Devora’s angelic vocals—often layered in patchy overdubs for an even more ethereal effect. This juxtaposition is what makes hard/SWEET live up to its name. Occasionally, another instrument will take the lead—the piano at the intro of “Rush” is absolutely arresting; on “Common Condition,” the drum fills masquerade as hooks in themselves. hard/SWEET also sees Devora making more use of her upper register, restrained as she sends her breathy high notes skyward. “Love Like Mine” is a gorgeous unraveling, the pillowy sighs that cushion her confessions mixed prominently, nearly turning to sobs at the song’s end as the refrain crumples at its edges: “Don’t you want? Don’t you want a love like mine?” On “Bucks County,” her gossamer vocals are a sonic manifestation of her desperation and self-sacrifice. “I’m an outline, fill me in,” she pleads. “You’re a phantom limb.” Queen of Jeans’ songs tend to explore romantic gray areas. Usually they’re a source of frustration and instability, but perhaps even more compelling is Devora’s underlying fear that she wouldn’t know what to do with a love that she could define. “Something tells me that deep down we know this love will fall apart if we name it,” she sings on “Rush.” The daydream space between reality and fantasy is where the most potent emotions bloom, ripe for storytelling and romanticizing the heights you’ll inevitably fall from once it all gets too real. “How do you stop a heart from breaking?” Devora asks. “You play it songs to focus on its pain.” [Memory] <img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" src="https://www.pastemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/05/PasteSectionBreak.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="100" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-431434" /> Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Alternative, ANTICS, Marvin, Swim Into The Sound, and her “mostly about music” newsletter, Our Band Could Be Your Wife.