Unlettered, the New York studio project featuring Mike Knowlton (Gapeseed, Poem Rocket) and Kelly Grimm, are set to release the follow-up album to their 2024 release, Five Mile Pilot.
Devil’s Bowl is out on June 26, and exclusive to Sun 13, you can listen to their latest single, Before::After, ahead of its official release below.
Before::After is a breath of fresh air. Alt-rock in the now, Unlettered surge to new places. With the droning hum of Unwound and carrying the swagger of Girls Against Boys, Before::After is vibrant. It shakes and explodes. It’s all vigour.
Speaking of the track, Knowlton says, “Before::After is about what happens at the threshold, the moment just before everything changes. You can feel it coming but you can’t stop it. The ground shifts and suddenly you’re living in the after whether you’re ready or not.”
Having returned with Poem Rocket in 2024 via the wonderful Lend-Lease EP (which featured in our top EPs of that year), via the Unlettered project, Knowlton moves further afield.
Musically, Devil’s Bowl tightens the screws. Guitars grind and recoil. Bass carries the melodic weight like a slow-moving storm front. Written and performed by Knowlton and Grimm, on two tracks, Peter Gordon, Knowlton’s longtime bandmate in Gapeseed and Poem Rocket, plays drums, reconnecting the present tense of Unlettered with the physical momentum of its past.
This is not a protest record, though it vibrates with unrest. It is not a manifesto, though it circles questions of power, performance, and collapse. It is not a diagnosis – more like a fever reading.
If Five Mile Point traced personal transition, loss, memory, the weight of what lingers, then Devil’s Bowl widens the aperture. The grief turns structural. The introspection turns civic. The tension that defined earlier work hasn’t dissipated, it has scaled up, pressing against something larger than the self.
Devil’s Bowl is out June 26. Pre-order from Bandcamp here.
Unlettered - Devil's Bowl 