By Rocco Prioletti, News Editor & Copy Editor

[Rough Trade; 2025]

Rating: 9/10

caroline insistently blurs the line between the angular, half-crumbling abrasive and the splenda-soaked, irresistibly breathtaking. If you ever find yourself laying down in an open field somewhere with your life flashing before your eyes, listen to this song.

“Total euphoria” is structured around two fractured guitar lines which hurriedly hocket back and forth over each other until they finally, and fleetingly, meet in sync. Like driving by some overlapping hazard lights flickering from a car crash, and the skyline overhead is melting into a sunset — it’s this inability to look away that caroline harnesses here, finding beauty inside disorder. As even overtop the dense instrumentation, an absolutely addictive pop-inclined duet sweetens the bitterness surrounding it. 

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There are so many unique and interesting ideas captured at full potential here. For instance, the teetering start-stop drums, reminiscent of like-minded contemporaries such as Still House Plants and forgotten Chicago avant-rock acts like Storm & Stress. So now with the rhythm section left untethered to traditional timekeeping, caroline is allowed to experiment with time in unique ways. And in “Total euphoria,” the downbeat never strikes the same place twice: sounding as if a noise rock group had been taking notes from the free jazz combo that just opened for them. 

Though, the most earcatching moment is certainly when, midway through its runtime, the song is unexpectedly enveloped into a sinkhole of blown-out bass. Visceral, emphatic and undoubtedly surreal — caroline hits listeners with an in real-time revelation; the soundtrack to  suddenly realizing your entire life had been a dream. And the comedown afterwards unravels into one of the most powerful moments in music I’ve ever heard. Here, a droning suite of violins, trombones and harmoniums seer over a mournful vocal harmony: all tuned-in to the same frequency of pure yearning. caroline have, yet again, concocted another recipe for retangling that knot now left to clot in your throat. 

If their self-titled debut in 2022 didn’t already solidify caroline’s ranking as one of the most exciting and forward-thinking groups in rock today, then “Total euphoria” is guaranteed to do so. 

Listen here: