I attempted a somersault for the first time in twenty years recently, and while I’d like to say the result was a feat of athleticism, it was more a clumsy, slow-motion unraveling of muscle memory. My body, once so keen to fold and tumble, resisted the very idea of bending in on itself. I tried to coax my knees toward my face, but momentum stalled, and the whole thing collapsed into embarrassment. When I finally did tip over, it was not a polished arc but a lopsided roll that veered left, sending my heel crashing into the sharp edge of the coffee table. The pain was immediate, but so was a touch of something else—a brief, electric joy. For a moment, I remembered what it felt like to be nine, to move without calculation, to believe in the possibility of flight, even if only for a second before the landing.

That mix of brief, half-remembered joy and the unknowing pit of uncertainty is exactly what Somersaults, deathcrash’s third album, both feels like and circles around—that second-coming-of-age sensation. With a gentle gesture of slowcore-meets-power-pop, the album reaches listeners with rare clarity, guiding them almost inevitably toward the quieter realization that your body remembers movements your confidence no longer trusts. But these songs aren’t just about recalling instincts that were once effortless—emotional, relational, creative—these fragments of wistfulness pull you into the pain of how much more effort those instincts now demand.

That tentativeness toward remembrance and reawakening shapes how Somersaults sounds. More lyrically forward than anything deathcrash has released thus far, Somersaults almost resembles a band at the beginning of their career arc rather than one several records deep. Feelings are stated rather than having been submerged beneath the aural sprawl that bands tend to favor when words no longer speak all that needs to be said. It’s as if clarity itself has become the risk; it’s sort of aging in reverse, but gracefully.

On the title track, Banks reflects, “As you grew up into an elegant life / My childhood room was still the centre of mine / We used to somersault from evergreen pines,” and the line lands, almost like a small confession dressed as scenery. Twinkling guitars—a newer wrinkle for this rather drab band—and steady drums nudge the song forward, pulling listeners between the beauty of mundane images and the ache of realizing those moments can’t quite be reclaimed.

Much of Somersaults draws its potency from those ordinary portraits and routines—walking home, staying put, returning to childhood rooms—only to show how fragile those comforts have become once you’re old enough to understand what they were doing for you. Even at its warmest, the record keeps a slight distance: memory preserved as memory, not refuge.

That distance sharpens on “Stay Forever,” where domestic closeness is voiced less as nostalgia than as need. “Stay with mum and dad / On the weekend,” Banks sings, repeating the plea until it sounds less like longing and more like disbelief that such steadiness once existed at all. The desire isn’t to return so much as to suspend time—“Stay forever like you used to”—knowing full well it won’t hold.

These small, wistful moments never quite crystallize—for the apathetic grip of aging has tightened. Throughout the record, childhood, home, and intimacy are recalled clearly but remain unreachable, their gravity coming from how firmly they’re locked in the past. Which is why Somersaults doesn’t romanticize innocence so much as acknowledge its absence, bravely letting the ache settle without pretending it can be undone.

And with this acknowledgement comes the record’s redemptive power: It’s life-affirming through the malaise of being alive, when you’re not too old but not quite the bright-eyed wonder who once gazed at the stars with the world in your hands. In “Love for M,” Banks admits, “I don’t know if I’ll die with grace / I’m not sure if I want to,” a line that doesn’t solve anything, but does name the fear of this finite life without dressing it up. “Marie’s Last Dance” turns that uncertainty into a hard question—“Will you go out in vain / Will you go out in pain? / And feel the light.”

But Somersaults doesn’t end by surrendering to the suggested numbness. Instead, it keeps moving in a lopsided, hopeful forward motion—like a somersault, attempted for the first time in years—toward a feeling sturdier than nostalgia. To find it, we have to circle back to “CMC,” where that effort is almost startling in its honesty—“I destroy myself in panic / Making groans every morning / Hoping I’ll wake you”—and then the album’s thesis arrives like a shaky exhale: “This life is the best life / Oh god it’s the only one.”

That’s why the mantra in “CMC” lands as more than a hook: it’s the record finally saying what it’s been too careful to say outright. From these words, everything Somersaults has been carrying—walked-home-on-purpose hesitations, childhood-room relics, the childlike pleadings—clicks into place. Adult life doesn’t just shrink your courage; it asks for more of it, daily, with no extra reward. Deathcrash don’t dress that up. They keep the landing out of frame with the bruises and all more in focus, insistent that the attempt counts. That plainness is the breakthrough—and it makes this their boldest record yet.

Pre-order Somersaults by deathcrash HERE