Atsuko Chiba – Torn

Montréal five-piece Atsuko Chiba are back with “Torn”, the second single from their self-titled fourth album, due April 24 on Mothland. We covered the lead single “Retention” back in Week 6, where the album’s approach — free-form sessions, stripped-back instrumentation, a deliberate move away from the aggressive guitar sound of their earlier records came into focus.

The band’s description of the song is worth quoting at length, because it does more for the track than any summary would. It follows a protagonist who constructs a false reality to earn others’ trust, gradually loses himself in the deception, and ends up at the edge of a cliff, unsure how long he’s been awake: “What happens next remains unresolved: does he jump, or does an old photograph — himself beside his father — surface from his wallet, pulling him back toward the memory of who he once was? We don’t know”. Imposter syndrome reframed not as paralysis but as propulsion, until the machine runs out of road.

Musically, “Torn” earns that description. It’s built around the rhythm section with synthesisers and layered vocals doing most of the structural work, and it holds its tension until a shift near the end that makes the lyrical ambiguity land harder. What gets me is how the arrangement mirrors the narrative — controlled and forward-moving right up until it isn’t.

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Tracklist:

1. Retention
2. Pretense
3. Future Ways
4. Tar Sands
5. Torn
6. Locked and Array