The House Flies make the darkness move on their new single ‘Lost Literature’
The House Flies have always seemed comfortable living in the shadows, but ‘Lost Literature’ proves they know exactly how to make those shadows dance.
The second single from forthcoming album 'Lions and Ore', the track takes the Moline quartet’s gothic post-punk foundations and gives them a sharper, more immediate pulse. Ozzie Woods’ bass does much of the heavy lifting, pushing forward beneath Nick Pompou’s steady drums while Alex Riggen and Burnie Eckhardt layer guitars around the rhythm rather than smothering it.
There's a real sense of movement to ‘Lost Literature’, and that matters because the lyrical imagery is far more disorientating. Rental cars, dim radios, porch lights and fragments of memory flicker past like scenes glimpsed through a window at night. Riggen’s repeated vocal phrases add to that sensation, circling questions of identity and absence as though the song is trying to remember something that keeps slipping out of reach.
Where previous single ‘Derelict Crawl’ leaned harder into weight and impact, ‘Lost Literature’ feels more fluid and addictive. There are clear echoes of The Cure, Joy Division and Interpol in the bass-led propulsion and dark guitar colour, but The House Flies avoid simply recreating familiar post-punk gestures. The distinctive Midwestern bleakness in their writing gives the song its own particular character.
As a preview of Lions and Ore, ‘Lost Literature’ is hugely encouraging. Moody, melodic and quietly hypnotic, it finds The House Flies refining the balance between gloom and accessibility. The darkness is still there, but this time it comes with a groove strong enough to pull you straight into it.
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