Three Track Week: Signals #15
Three songs that turn vulnerability, self-doubt and the fight for self-preservation into different forms of sound.
This week’s Three Track Week Signals 15 moves between raw hardcore, futuristic post-punk and cinematic indie. Soul Glo turn vulnerability and Black identity into a physical release on “February Theory”, M(h)aol confront the contradictions of self-acceptance on “Scam Manifesto”, while CA in LA explore the quiet struggle of self-preservation with “Waking Up”.
Soul Glo - When Hardcore Becomes a Space for Vulnerability
“February Theory” comes at you immediately: hard drums, screaming vocals and abrasive electric guitars create a sound that is loud, physical and unmistakably rooted in hardcore and punk. Bass and drums keep driving the track forward, with barely any room to breathe. Even the brief passages where only drums, bass and vocals remain feel less like a break than another way of keeping the pressure on.
That intensity is exactly what makes the song’s subject matter so interesting. “February Theory” is about relationships ending, but Pierce Jordan approaches the subject through a much wider emotional and almost spiritual lens. The recurring phenomenon of relationships falling apart in February becomes a search for meaning, with Jordan describing a process of transformation from scorpion to eagle to phoenix. The aggression of the music therefore carries something much more vulnerable underneath it: confusion, grief and the attempt to understand what comes after an ending. This is part of what Soul Glo have been doing within hardcore more broadly. Their music makes space for experiences that are often treated as opposites to hardcore’s confrontational energy: vulnerability, self-doubt, intimacy and emotional dependence. At the same time, the band places Black experience and diaspora within a genre and scene where those perspectives have not always been centred. The result is music that feels deeply rooted in the underground while refusing to treat the underground as a fixed set of rules. “February Theory” is the opening track of "NA I’M GON GRAB ALLAT" (out January 15, 2027), Soul Glo’s first album in three years and the follow-up to 2022’s Diaspora Problems. Across fourteen tracks, Jordan explores relationships with men, resentment, anxiety, addiction, self-discovery and the so-called male loneliness epidemic. The album is dedicated to people who have experienced the joy and pain of loving a man - whether that love is platonic, romantic, familial or directed towards oneself.
Recorded at Foto Club in Philadelphia, "NA I’M GON GRAB ALLAT" retains the band’s frantic hardcore foundation while bringing in heavy hip-hop beats and collaborations with artists including Tati Salazar, Eugene Robinson, MIKE, BbyMutha and Tunde Adebimpe. “February Theory” sets the tone by showing that hardcore can be both a physical release and a space for emotional reckoning. It sounds like something you could discover in a packed basement and immediately lose yourself in, but there is a much more complicated story underneath the noise.
🎧 Stream “February Theory” on Apple Music · Follow Soul Glo on Instagram
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M(h)aol - When Self-Acceptance Becomes Another Expectation
“Scam Manifesto” sounds like the inside of a machine. Choppy drums and spoken-word vocals establish a tense rhythm before a powerful synth takes over, accompanied by a hard bass line. Everything feels robotic, futuristic and slightly abrasive, with a club-oriented pulse underneath it. The track sounds modern, but there is something uncomfortable about that modernity.
That discomfort reflects the contradiction at the centre of the song. Constance Keane wrote “Scam Manifesto” during a social media break, after being confronted with an endless stream of weight-loss advice and obituaries. She describes the guilt of publicly arguing that women should be free to age and look however they want while privately maintaining a list of things she wanted to change about her own appearance. The “scam” is not simply the beauty industry or social media. It is the gap between the ideals we defend and the standards we still apply to ourselves. This is where M(h)aol turn a deeply personal experience into a wider cultural signal. Self-acceptance has become part of the language of contemporary culture, but so has constant self-surveillance. Social media can tell us to love ourselves while simultaneously providing an endless stream of bodies, faces and lifestyles against which to measure ourselves. “Scam Manifesto” captures that contradiction without pretending to stand outside it. Keane admits that she is caught in the same system she is questioning. The production reinforces that idea. The hard bass, dominant synth and clipped percussion create something almost mechanical, as if the song is moving through the same repetitive loop as the expectations it describes. Yet the track also feels made for a club: confrontational, physical and alive. M(h)aol turn an internal contradiction into something you can move to, rather than something that needs to be neatly resolved.
“Scam Manifesto” is the first new release from M(h)aol since their acclaimed 2025 album "Something Soft". The Dublin band have built their work around misogyny, relationships, consumerism, identity and empathy, consistently combining humour with vulnerability. Here, they show how those subjects can intersect in something as seemingly personal as the way we look at ourselves. The result is a track that does not offer another rule for how to feel about your body. Instead, it asks what happens when even the demand to accept yourself becomes another standard you feel you have to live up to.
🎧 Stream “Scam Manifesto” on Apple Music · Follow M(h)aol on Instagram
CA in LA - Waking Up to the Fight Within
“Waking Up” begins quietly, with smooth drums, soft guitar strumming and warm female vocals. The atmosphere feels melancholic at first, almost suspended in place. When the chorus arrives, the song opens up and becomes more hopeful without losing the underlying sadness. In the second verse, the vocals grow slightly more intense, but the overall mood remains restrained.
That gradual shift mirrors the signal at the centre of the song: self-preservation is not always a dramatic breakthrough. Sometimes it begins with simply recognising that something has to change. “Waking Up” explores the internal struggle of overcoming harmful thoughts and behaviors, and the music reflects that process by moving from melancholy towards something more open and uplifting. There is no sudden transformation in the track. Instead, CA in LA let the emotional movement happen gradually. The soft guitars and warm vocals create an intimate space, while the chorus offers a glimpse of what it might feel like to move beyond the patterns that have been causing harm. The second verse becoming more intense suggests that the struggle has not disappeared, but neither has the possibility of moving forward. The song also reflects the duo’s wider artistic approach. Courtney and Ashleigh have worked across film, ceramics, painting and woodburning since forming CA in LA in 2013, with each medium informing the others. Their music follows the same philosophy, using ethereal soundscapes, harmonies and symbolism to create spaces that feel both expansive and intensely personal.
“Waking Up” turns that multidisciplinary sensibility inward. Its cinematic atmosphere does not make the subject feel distant or abstract; it draws the listener into an internal landscape where melancholy, struggle and self-preservation exist at the same time. The signal is ultimately a quiet one: healing does not always arrive as a clean break. Sometimes it sounds like slowly waking up to yourself.
Three artists. Three very different ways of responding to a world that constantly asks us to perform, adapt and hold ourselves together. Soul Glo challenge the idea that vulnerability has to be quiet, turning emotional conflict into something loud, physical and collective. M(h)aol expose the contradiction at the heart of modern self-acceptance: we are told to love ourselves while being given endless reasons to change. CA in LA remind us that resistance can also be deeply personal - the decision to protect yourself, even when the fight is happening entirely within. Different sounds, different perspectives, but the signal is clear: in a culture built around pressure, vulnerability can be a form of resistance.
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Further perspectives are available in our Artist Features, Cultural Essays and On This Track, each situating music within broader cultural and structural contexts.
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