Playing loud, relentlessly cheerful pop songs every night has a way of catching up to you. Remi Wolf spent almost the entirety of her twenties living out of a suitcase on tour, riding the momentum of her 2021 debut Juno and its 2024 follow-up Big Ideas. Both records turned manic funk arrangements and brassy flourishes into celebratory anthems, but the lifestyle that followed exacted a toll. As the months on the road stacked up, Wolf felt a sharp split between the sunny, explosive persona she projected under the stage lights and her actual state of mind behind the scenes. She was exhausted, detached, and ready to shed the noise.
Her third record, Mud, takes an intentional step away from that high-octane production. Rather than leaning on dense rhythm sections or vibrant horn parts, Wolf established a straightforward baseline for the new material. Every track had to work when stripped down to an acoustic guitar around a campfire, relying solely on melodic strength and emotional weight rather than studio trickery. To capture that rawer feeling, she set up camp at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, prioritizing tactile, earthy tones. The finished tracks rely on unvarnished acoustic strumming and gritty electric guitar leads, favoring a grounded foundation over pure, kinetic release.
The sound draws heavily on classic rock and roots traditions. Wolf looked to the easy vocal harmonies of America, the weathered songcraft of Lucinda Williams, and the relaxed, meandering style of Kurt Vile, alongside the catalogs of Neil Young and Paul McCartney with Wings. Because the material felt so intimate, Wolf restricted the studio roster to a tiny group of people she trusted completely. She worked alongside longtime collaborator Jared Solomon, close friend Jack DeMeo, and her sister-in-law Gigi Grombacher. Having family and longtime allies in the room protected her from second-guessing herself as she put vulnerable thoughts onto tape.
Finding the tracklist required a ruthless winnowing process. Wolf, who contends with ADHD and an intense dislike of repeating herself, wrote roughly 130 songs during the project. To determine what genuinely belonged on Mud, she and her collaborators devised an unusual two-part rule. A song needed to feel emotionally murky, but it also had to achieve what the group called SpongeBob Ascendance. The phrase referenced the popular online meme of the cartoon character hovering into the sky while wearing headphones. If a song did not marry heavy emotional resonance with that distinct sense of weightless lift, it was cut from the running order.
The heaviness running through the material is tied to difficult periods away from the stage. In addition to the sheer physical depletion of years on the road, Wolf entered the writing sessions while reeling from a painful breakup. She was also actively untangling the shame attached to her alcohol addiction. The turning point in the process arrived halfway through recording with Covered In Mud, a song that quickly became the project's thematic center. To Wolf, mud represents the heavy, messy, and unpleasant things people tend to avoid, but wading straight into that dirt proved liberating. Writing through the discomfort functioned as an emotional cleanse, giving voice to issues she had brushed aside during her most hectic working years.
The record arrives during a lively period for the California native. Earlier this year, she joined Hayley Williams onstage, and an appearance in the romantic drama Off Campus recently picked up viral traction online. She still nurtures whimsical, offbeat goals, including a wish to voice a character in an animated Pixar movie. For now, however, Mud keeps its feet planted firmly on solid ground. Wolf has cast off the polished gloss of standard pop to reckon with heartbreak, sobriety, and road-weary fatigue, building a record that sits patiently with real pain instead of attempting to outrun it.
