After their critically acclaimed 2008 release Three Times Dead, Hemlock Smith & Les Poissons Autistes return—this time with Arnaud Ivan Sponar (aka Goodbye Ivan)—and adopt a new name to match the project’s shifted mood and method: The Worst. Despite the title, this is not a record about maritime disasters or U-boats. It’s a long-distance collaboration built at home over three years, with files shuttling between Brooklyn, NY and Switzerland. The music carries that distance: songs of separation and loss, of how life can turn hard—and lonely—unless we look after one another. Captured on a whim yet carefully shaped, the album charts uncharted waters where three distinct sensibilities meet. Sonically, the set moves between spectral folk, twisted chamber miniatures, and heavy-hearted torch songs. Mostly acoustic instruments anchor the arrangements—laptops assist rather than dominate—so the pieces feel like musical letters sent across an ocean: intimate, hand-wrought, and quietly haunted. The name The Worst nods to one track title and to lyrics that stare down our darker sides; in truth, these are “death songs” only by metaphor. They’re about the difficulty—and dignity—of living. As ever, things are rarely what they seem.