Greg Mendez has always been an economical songwriter – he wields restraint and simplicity as tools, the
core of his songs sharpened into simple, cutting truths. On Beauty Land, his new album and debut LP for
Dead Oceans, we’re guided by a wry but forgiving narrator, an underdog who has learned to balance
cynicism and faith. These songs are self-effacing without self-pity, carefully constructed altars of
imperfection channeled through pop melodies, shimmering but urgent guitars, and a voice that reaches
for choir boy innocence.

The bulk of Beauty Land was recorded directly to tape, almost entirely alone in Mendez’s makeshift home
studio in Philadelphia - a small room with no natural light. It’s his first full length since his unexpected self-
titled breakthrough in 2023, which was a slow burn success following 15 years of writing and recording
music in relative obscurity between Philly and New York. Beauty Land picks up where we left off three
years ago – plumbing the depths of grief, love, and addiction – but its intense, quiet clarity shows Mendez
at his songwriting best.

Parts of Beauty Land feel like a lucid dream, dented characters carve their way through a world that’s
cartoonish and warped – the broken-clock march of “I Wanna Feel Pretty,” the chiming toy piano on
“Gentle Love.” “Mary / Dreaming” begins as a sparse, finger-picked lament before cutting abruptly to a
deflated, Beach-Boys-but-make-it-fucked-up resolution that brings both melancholy and joy; a sense that
all things can be true at once. None of the 14 tracks here break three minutes, but they tell stories that
span lifetimes.

Death floats through the record, whether it appears as a memory or a threat. Everything feels precarious.
There’s a fragility to how these songs are built: the way the funeral organ hits alongside the morphine on
“Looking Out Your Window,” the devastating simplicity of “Frog,” with its slowed-down keyboard and bare
refrain: “Please forgive me for my faults.” Beauty Land feels, at times, impossibly lonely. Which makes it
really count when it doesn’t – like when Mendez sings in harmony with his wife and bandmate, Veronica
near the end of “So Mean” and it feels like a cherished reunion, a fleeting moment of redemption, a
temporary parting of the seas.