Sonically, Smut’s Tomorrow Comes Crashing lands at the angsty crossroads of teenage wasteland rebellion and shadowy yet whimsical dreamland. Released on June 27, 2025, through Bayonet Records, it combines two sides of the ’90s indie music scene to create a Shoegaze Doomer Dream Pop with a little more definition in the guitar and bass chords. The guitar pedals used are fuzzy, yes, but not droning with constant echo and feedback. The result is a lot more energy and life flowing through each song compared to their previous album, and it’s heavy Shoegaze inspiration and depressing themes.
Lead Singer Tay Roebuck helps fuel the outraged riot grrl sound that has always snapped tightly into place in the pop world. They are defiant like Joan Jett and the Runaways, sharp-witted like Le Tigre, and a complete bittersweet package, most recently advertised by singers like Olivia Rodrigo and Dazey and the Scouts. Scratch all that, the Punk Rock and Alt Rock scene may have helped inspire the band, but their newest release, Tomorrow Comes Crashing, is steeped in influences from metal and Thrash Rock. A first-time listener may overlook this, but when the first two albums are taken into account, it is clear that Smut is using this new release to experiment and explore a harder sound.
The lyricism is introspective and submerged in cynicism, making it perfect to accompany the Flower Grunge aesthetic that Dream Pop essentially invented in the ’90s. The Metal elements of their songs are used in two ways. To drive an otherwise airy song forward, like in “Touch Go,” and as a curveball of thrashing emotion, “Syd Sweeney” and “Crashing in the Coil.” Both ways, it works well. The guitarists, Andie Min and Sam Ruschman, complement Roebuck’s voice well due to their ability to fill the space. Instead of the technical guitar solos that fill the interludes of popular Heavy Metal songs, the bridge and bass chords are simple and quick. Slowly building off of each other with waves of noise. This is particularly good in “Spit,” where Roebuck rambles on about luck and fate while the drums slowly build over her. The tension is released by a barren wasteland of infinitely expanding yet crystal clear guitar, and is met with the end of the song, a simple fade into nothing.
Then, the final track, “Sunset Hymnal,” likely due to the album’s title, feels like the beating heart of the release. Here, Roebuck is lost in reverie, remembering the chaotic beauty of prayer at sunset. She sings –
“In the rain/ Looking up/ The stars come at you/ Are you there?/ The spaces in between.”
Recounting the stars, which hold the future, falling down on her. Stuck in this apocalypse, the speaker is thinking of someone else, searching for a glimpse of them in the future. This search is never completed, and the message of the album becomes apparent. Time, the future, waits for no one. As we all move on in this beautiful chaos of living, waiting for others will only cloud our vision. Yet it is those very same people who give us hope for the future in the first place.
An intellectual and expressive final song to close this album and release the emotional gymnastics that the previous songs had expressed. The screeching yet fleeting guitar to close the album out is a great addition, an example of how Smut is asking the listener to wait, hold out, persist, for a different world, even though the truth is that tomorrow will always crash in instead. For all these reasons, Cryptic Rock gives Tomorrow Comes Crashing 4.5 out of 5 stars.
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