Underlined Passages - The Accelerationists

Underlined Passages returns October 17 with The Accelerationists, an eight-song record shaped by exhaustion, disconnection, and the subtle pressure of systems that no longer pretend to work. The band, now a trio, offers a more stripped-down sound than 2024’s Landfill Indie. The warmth is gone. The melodies remain, but they carry more weight. The record holds its shape under tension.

The majority of the album was tracked with J. Robbins at the Magpie Cage in Baltimore. A few songs were recorded with longtime collaborator Frank Marchand. The contrast between approaches shaped the album’s feel—focused, dynamic, and unpolished in the right ways.

The title is not theoretical. It points to the systems we live under: fast, distracted, and unsustainable. This is a record about what happens when the promised futures collapse, but the momentum continues. It draws from the broken optimism of pieces like Wired’s The Long Boom and the emotional flatness explored in Adam Curtis’s HyperNormalisation. These aren’t references. They are the static in the background, and the band plays through it.

The songs are built on restraint. The lyrics stay clipped, inward. The guitars do most of the speaking. Endsong opens the record with a quiet refusal. Heywood Floyd looks out at the structure and says nothing. Flaxxon and Somelin speak in symptom and sedation. Tyrannique suggests control without showing force. Remainder closes the album with what’s left when nothing changes.

There are no breakthroughs here. There is no concept to explain. The Accelerationists is a record about standing still inside collapse and how to hold presence when everything moves too fast to matter.