Album: Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost
Artist: How I Became Invisible
Released: April 25, 2025; Anthropic Principle Records
It is very hard to me right now not to claim that How I Became Invisible is my favorite band, but picking a favorite band to me is like trying to pick your favorite child. They are each unique, cool and bring meaning to your life in their own special way. So instead, I will just say that How I Became Invisible’s 2023 release “better or the next best thing” meant a lot to me so I was absolutely stoked when “Everything Not saved Will Be lost” dropped. Emily Reed is an amazing song writer who puts her heart into every song. I could simply not wait to dive into this release.
The album starts off with the song “Make It A Good Ending” and really sets the stage for the album. It is chalked full of sci-fi imagery. This absolutely continues throughout the rest of the album to great effect. The literal end of the world has never sounded so eerily hopeful.
The break out song of the album has to be “Biblically Accurate Arby’s Witch”. The synth on this song goes so hard in such a specific way; it is hard to not wonder if Motion City Soundtrack at least in part, did not inspired this song. It’s an upbeat high energy love song, which I can’t say has ever been my jam, but this one just hits. I think it perfectly captures the joy and longing of being perfectly completely in love. I get wildly happy just listening to it.
The next song I really feel I need to give accolades to is “This is not a Place of Honor”. The atmosphere presented by this song is thicker than that of Venus. I said earlier the the first track was chalked full of sci-fi imagery, well this song is like that as well but for sci-fi vibes. It’s technically not an instrumental as there are two kinds of vocalizations in the song. First, there are barely audible vocals that sound like radio transmissions from something that was lost long ago. Then, Emily adds faint scream like vocalizations towards the end of the song. Both are pretty incomprehensible and when combined with the instrumentation, really create the feeling of insolation and dread. Now here is the creepy part: while the transmissions are hard to understand, when listening to track, they are listed in the lyric sheet of the album (at least on Bandcamp). I am not going to spoil what they say here but I do suggest you look them up after listening to the song a couple of times. It really adds to the haunting vibes when you find out after the fact that the message you didn’t understand and likely ignored was in fact a warning. This is, in my humble opinion, is peak storytelling within the medium.
The last song I feel needs mentioned is “You Are (Not) The Problem”. It is just a really solid trans resistance anthem that succeeds at being both a bop that makes you want to move your feet and a fight song that makes you want to stand up and fight. The choir piece at the end is the cherry on top.
“Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost” is a fantastical romp through space. It tells a story of impeding doom and the will to continue to not only fight in the face of devastation, but love in spite of it all. It is the message we need these days and having it set to a ripping Pop-punk soundtrack makes it even better. Everyone should definitely check it out if they haven’t already.
