Scarlet Fever Turn Emotional Whiplash Into Alt Rock Ammunition on “Gaslight” & “Sublime”

Scarlet Fever is not here to be labeled as a promising young band. With “Gaslight” and “Sublime,” the Vancouver alt-rock quartet basically asked, what if we made music for people who have been emotionally mangled but still wake up hot and self-aware? They delivered. Hard.

Still barely old enough to rent a car, the band has already figured out something artists twice their age struggle with. Rage and softness can exist in the same body without canceling each other out. “Gaslight” hits like someone finally naming every lie you swallowed in a relationship you should have escaped months earlier.

The distortion is not tasteful. It is messy, sour, suffocating. Exactly how psychological manipulation feels when you are trapped inside it. The percussion kicks like it is trying to break through the drywall. The vocal performance is not cleansed or pretty. It is honest. The way a bruised truth sounds when you spit it instead of whispering it.

Scarlet Fever pivot and drop “Sublime,” the dreamlike counterweight. This one feels like lying on your bedroom floor at 2 AM, replaying every red flag you let slide and still feeling strangely at peace with it. The shimmering guitar layers create a slow-motion free fall. The vocal delivery floats instead of tearing through the mix. If “Gaslight” is the confrontation, “Sublime” is the recovery. Soft, heavy, and painfully self-aware.

Together, these tracks do more than tease the debut album “Girl With Shank.” They promise an era. The band draws on 1990s alt-rock grit. Yes, there are fingerprints of Momma and Snail Mail and the faint ghost of Hole. They are not cosplaying nostalgia. They are building something feral and current, rooted in the emotional landscape of 2025. A landscape where everyone has become an unpaid therapist for people who do not even like them.

Replay value is high. The songs linger like a scent you cannot wash out of your jacket. They make you want to confront someone. Or text them. Or block them. Possibly all three in the same afternoon.