FI REVIEWS: Claire Ozmun - Always Living Somewhere (album, 2026)
New York indie rockers Claire Ozmun Band drive you into Hell City and back
New York singer-songwriter Claire Ozmun and band’s full-length album Always Living Somewhere drives you in a beat-up and rattling old Chevy across the abandoned farmlands of the rust belt where on the stormy horizon the flame-spewing skyscrapers of scrap metal roll in: it’s Hell City. Across 40 minutes and 10 tracks, Ozmun explores sonic moods ranging from diabolical hell rock in Routine to sad hipster country (not pejorative) in Ferris Wheel (Out in the Rain) to driving, high-octane anthems in Stray Black Dog.
The band has a particular taste for lush atmospheres and tones, especially the eerie-beautiful synth filling out Goodman or the gang vocals nah-nah-nahing over the stadium solo at the end of ZIELLO. The album reaches moving, goosebumps-inducing highs as Ozmun’s vocals and lyrics evoke the fear of being out of reach of a helping hand, of being left behind.
At times, it does risk flying too low, like in midpoint track Edgewater. For me, the composition here doesn’t give me enough harmonically or melodically to latch onto, so I struggled to follow it from the very low start into the intended high-point catharsis. But the wicked talent for tone, groove, and pure rock soon returns with the next track, the title track, a banger that ends so heavy I was begging for more.
In fact, the energy is even higher on the back half of the album. It’s not a quiet contemplative collection of tunes meant to be heard in private. It’s a journey worth seeing through to the end. Like in life, man. One day, you look back on all the homes you had to move on from and think: at least you were Always Living Somewhere.
Favorite track: Stray Black Dog
Listen to Claire Ozmun’s Always Living Somewhere on Bandcamp: