"If anything, WIRED suggests a band that understands exactly what they do well and is more interested in refining that than chasing reinvention. It’s focused, emotionally charged, and just restless enough to keep pulling you back in."
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Must Listen
By Rachael Dowd
Basement have always thrived in the space between emotional vulnerability and blunt-force catharsis, and WIRED feels like a deliberate sharpening of that balance. It’s not a reinvention so much as a tightening, 12 tracks that strip away excess and lean hard into urgency, melody, and the band’s knack for making grungey heaviness feel immediate rather than indulgent.
The album opens with “Time Waster,” a fitting thesis statement. It wastes no time itself – jagged, heavy guitars, a restless tempo, and a vocal delivery that sounds caught between resignation and defiance. That tension carries straight into the title track “WIRED,” one of the shortest songs here but also one of the most electric. It pulses with nervous energy, as if the band is actively resisting the urge to slow down.
“Deadweight” and “Broken By Design” anchor the first half with a more familiar Basement weight, thicker riffs, broader hooks, and lyrics that circle themes of self-sabotage and emotional fatigue. There’s a sense that the band isn’t just revisiting these ideas, but interrogating them more directly. “Broken By Design,” in particular, stands out for how it balances bleakness with a chorus that feels oddly liberating.
The middle stretch, “Pick Up The Pieces,” “Embrace,” and “Sever,” is where WIRED really locks in. These tracks feel lean and intentional, with no wasted space. “Embrace” offers a rare moment of openness, pulling back the distortion just enough to let the melody breathe, while “Sever” snaps right back with a tighter, more aggressive edge.
On the back half, “The Way I Feel” and “Satisfy” lean into the band’s melodic instincts. They’re not softer, exactly, but more reflective, songs that let the emotional weight linger rather than explode. “Head Alight” builds on that, gradually layering intensity until it crests without ever tipping into excess.
“Longshot” feels like a late-album jolt, reintroducing a sense of scrappy unpredictability before the closer, “Summer’s End,” brings everything down to a slow burn. It’s a fitting conclusion, less about resolution and more about acceptance, ending the record on a note that feels open-ended and quietly heavy.
What makes WIRED work is its discipline. Basement don’t overextend any one idea; most tracks hover around the three-minute mark, hitting hard and moving on. The result is an album that feels immediate and replayable, but not disposable. There’s depth here, just delivered in tighter bursts. If anything, WIRED suggests a band that understands exactly what they do well and is more interested in refining that than chasing reinvention. It’s focused, emotionally charged, and just restless enough to keep pulling you back in.
