If I had to describe the sound on The Howl & The Hum’s latest album Same Mistake Twice, it would be something like disillusioned millennial folk rock. While the album toys with hints of heartland rock and alternative country, it’s the lyrics that ultimately cement the album in a peculiar time and place – namely, the here and now, where thoughts of getting hit by a car to collect insurance money in lieu of a job seem perhaps as comical as they seem practical. Sam Griffiths’ lyricism is truly the centerpiece to this record as he rattles off prose about feeling stuck in life, falling back into drug habits, fighting through relational ups and downs, and wondering if life has moved on without him. This might sound depressing on paper, or, at best, somewhat plain, but Griffiths’ penmanship is certainly of the tragicomic flavor and he’s not afraid to write himself in on the punchline.

This is obvious even from the record’s opening words: “I never make the same mistake twice. I always go back for a third time.” Griffiths seems to almost celebrate his destructive habits, comparing them later to performing an encore. He is on stage and all hypothetical eyes on him. Even when he dies, he finds himself arguing with some angelic entity and insisting he will not change his ways. Meanwhile, the track below blossoms gradually from an initial singer-songwriting mood toward a more nostalgic rock number to full-blown saxophone chaos. While Griffiths ruminates on repeating his mishaps and forgetting his friends’ occupations, the song’s instrumental parts do anything except stay the same. As far as opening tracks go, “Same Mistake Twice” checks all the boxes and sets the tone for the rest of the album.

“All Your Friends Hate Me” carries much of the same energy: there’s a smooth guitar groove beneath smooth string arrangements that gives an REM-adjacent feel. Meanwhile, Griffiths note, “All your friends hate me and all their friends hate me, now all my friends hate me, too,” and later adds, “I think I might just join the club. I hate me too.” It’s a somewhat light-hearted look at relational dynamics and the way actions ripple beyond the context of the couple, but no one really has the moral high ground when everyone agrees who’s to blame.

The album takes an interesting alt-rock turn on “No One Has to Know,” a song that sound arguably crunchier than its compatriots with more guitar and bass focus. It’s not the most notable lyrical highlight, those it does take a microscope to moments where intimacy feels forbidden.

“No Calories in Cocaine” is a playful and dancey number that walks through the nutrition facts of a variety of drugs, with quips about how there’s “no gluten in MDMA” and “no fat in ketamine.” Griffiths might be uttering confessions of self-obliteration, but you’d be excused if you missed the serious nature of his words under his playful delivery, captivating synth lines, and explosive mid-track break that builds into a frenetic end.

Things take a smooth, beachside turn on “The Wheel” whose percussive drip and gentle guitar strumming add a good measure of warmth to the middle of the album. The vocals are peppered with reverb for a bit of a Radiohead feel, and track only shows more and more of its experimental elements as its moves forward. Lyrically, Griffiths wrestles with the passage of time, noting, among other things, that “Since [he] got sexy [he’s] been questioning the deal.”

“Echo” is a late-album highlight, soft and tender with a couple harmonics tossed in for good measure. It’s more traditional indie than it is folk, and the piano and female backing vocals certainly give the track a sentimental flavor. Griffiths again wrestles with the passage of time and its inevitability, and lines like “You used to say ‘I’m not afraid to die, I’m afraid of the terms and conditions.”

The broken-hearted flavors persist on “Pale Blue Dot”, a song based off the famous picture of the same title of earth from far out in space. The lyrics here wrestle with the strange interplay of thoughts of cosmic insignificance and craving attention and approval all the same. Take these opening lyrics:

You lie on discounted eiderdown
I lie about who I dreamt about last night
The TV tells me that God loves me
Well then why does He leave me on read?

Jesus Christ I feel lonely
The only affection I get is through phone screens
Or adverts on Pornhub
Do you think they want to meet me at all?

The lines aren’t exactly reverent, but Griffith manages to weave together the extremes of piety and empty lusts together, admitting that both feel outside his reach. “I just want to be loved by everyone all of the time,” he notes. Perhaps he’s being facetious here, but every good joke works because it contains parts of truth. Here, real connection is this distant thing, barely in view, a place to seems futile to ever reach. It might feel bleak, but it certainly feels real. Griffiths acutely captures the sense of watching friends move away, get famous, get married, get divorced, and seemingly throw everything from the first acts of their lives away. At some point, keeping up with old friends feels as hard as making new ones.

So, how does the story end? This tale of not deserving second chances, of lost love and friendship and the world not being anything like what your parents promised? “Everything Is Not on Fire” is the perfect complement to the title track in terms of energy and lyrical strength, and while it doesn’t brush off the hardships of life, it sees Griffiths moving forward with at least some degree of optimism. The earlier part of the track wrestles with the compulsion to lie to friends and family about the states of our lives. Take these few lines as a good example:

How are you?
Sit down
How’s the search for the job?
Have you considered
Getting hit by a car?

Live off the insurance
Claim for a while
It’s fine
‘Cause everything is not on fire

I think Griffiths deserves some praise for simply acknowledging the difficulty of job hunting. When you have a job, you forgot the frustration of sending out applications for hours, only getting a handful of responses, and then getting ghosted by recruiters. Maybe it’s an extreme to suggest getting hit by a car would be better, but I know there are people out there who would actually find the process less painful.

Musically, the track has a constant rhythmic pulse that builds gently until string arrangements take center stage for a beautiful finale. Griffiths closes the album by reminding us to tell people we love them and how “everything will be alright.” It might be hard to argue the sincerity of this last bit, especially given the rest of the track’s sentiments on lying to people for their comfort, but if we consider the album as stages of grief, this is the point of acceptance. Maybe it IS worth trying to change things and to handle friendships and relationships differently. Maybe there’s value in recognizing the pain of those we’ve lost as a means to better appreciate the people around us in the moment.

As a whole, Same Mistake Twice is one of the most refreshing albums I’ve heard this year. It’s lyrically-untainted in a rare kind of way, and while I might not necessarily be onboard with all of Griffiths’ life choices, I can empathize with his pain and struggle. There are so many moments on this album worth quoting, so many memorable melodies, and so many ideas that tend to be overlooked by other artists for the sake of high art. What Griffiths shaves off in terms of pretense, he more than makes up for in a collection of genre-spanning tracks for 80s and 90s kids who just want people to understand that we’re living in weird times. And all of this is delivered with a good degree of humor and sarcasm, because sometimes the only way to keep yourself from crying is to have a good laugh. The album is a decided change from its predecessor Human Contact, though not necessarily in a better or worse way. Ultimately, Griffiths took the thoughts and feelings of a generation and put them to tape amidst upbeat, high-energy arrangements and it somehow just works.