FAEDA are really starting to feel like a band hitting that next gear where everything gets a bit sharper, a bit louder, and a lot more intentional. After the punchy momentum of ‘Look Me In The Eye’, they’re back with ‘All Thorns No Roses’, and we review it here at Music Crowns.
There’s a definite shift here. If the earlier material felt like it was built for big rooms and big choruses (which it absolutely still is), this new track has a heavier emotional weight sitting underneath the hooks. It’s darker, more bruised around the edges, and you can hear that they’ve stopped polishing everything quite so neatly. In a good way, it feels like they’ve let the scuffs show.
What really stands out is how direct it is emotionally. Robbie McNicol’s writing comes from a pretty personal place here, dealing with manipulation and that slow realisation of being pulled along by someone else’s agenda. But rather than turning inward in a quiet, reflective way, the band channel it into something far more outward-facing and explosive. It’s less “processing feelings in the corner” and more “burning it all off in real time.”
Sonically, they’ve leaned into a heavier indie-rock sound that sits somewhere between late-2000s alt-rock nostalgia and something more current and sharpened. There are echoes of that big, dramatic energy you’d associate with Panic! At The Disco in its more widescreen moments, while also brushing up against the kind of driving, anthemic grit you get from Twin Atlantic. But it never feels like imitation, more like reference points that get filtered through FAEDA’s own growing identity.
And that identity is becoming pretty clear now: big hooks, but with a harder emotional edge underneath them. The guitars feel more urgent this time, the dynamics hit a little more aggressively, and the whole thing carries this restless energy, like it’s constantly leaning forward
Considering the momentum they’ve already built , support slots, festival attention, award nods, this feels like a statement rather than just another single. Not reinvention, exactly, but definitely escalation. Like they’re tightening the screws on what they do best and starting to push it into slightly more dangerous territory.
