Philadelphia singer/songwriter Greg Mendez had been plugging away on the regional D.I.Y. scene for over 15 years when he unexpectedly generated some buzz with his 2023 eponymous LP. That album had stripped back the arrangements of many of his prior self-recorded indie rock tracks, arriving at something more intimate, acoustic-minded, and disarming while hanging on to his affinity for short, sensitive, self-conscious songs.
The Dead Oceans label signed him soon after its release. Arriving a full 20 years after his first MySpace uploads, he makes his proper full-length label debut with the like-minded Beauty Land, an album of regretful, confessional songs so short that they verge on a different art form. (Its 14 tracks clock in at 26 minutes.)