Bug Teeth’s debut full-length arrives softly, building and scrutinising loss down to its fine veins, even as it gazes upward to the skies.
With a title drawn from Robert Hooke’s 17th-century scientific text magnifying the minutiae of living forms, Micrographia zeroes in on the subtleties of grief, familial memory and the burden of loving someone who is gone.
At the heart of the album is the rupture of PJ Johnson’s life when their mother died suddenly in 2021 which left them unmoored and desperate to make sense of the absence. “Tapeworm” questions if her mother would prefer no children if she were to live her life over, “With time again would you give it up / A sacrifice / Would you give me up?” It’s a crippling place to begin.