There’s a moment about forty seconds into Epilogue, the new single from Boston indie dream pop artist Scrimshaw Porn, where everything clicks into place — the bass locks in, the drums surge forward, and what might have been a brooding meditation becomes something far more dangerous: a song you can move to. It’s a tension Nick Helgesen has been building toward for years, and on Epilogue, it finally breaks open.
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Helgesen is a songwriter who has always operated in the space between the personal and the epic. His back catalogue – from the worldwide radio success of Good Girl to the hauntingly intimate Eleonore and the chart-topping Olivia, which held the number one spot on the Worldwide Top 40 on Kbradio.online for three weeks last December – maps a restless artistic intelligence, one never content to repeat itself. But Epilogue represents something new. Where previous Scrimshaw Porn releases found their emotional gravity in piano and atmosphere, this track was built from the ground up on drive, rhythm, and an anger that demanded a different kind of release.
The collaborators tell the story as much as the music does. Multi-instrumentalist Matt Antunes – whose work on drums, bass, and guitar Helgesen describes as essential – brings a propulsive funkiness that anchors the track’s kinetic energy without ever letting it spin out of control. Co-producer Matt Ricci, a constant presence in the Scrimshaw Porn universe, shapes the layered sonic palette into something that feels simultaneously intimate and enormous. The result draws comparisons to the synth-driven urgency of Nation of Language, the cerebral cool of Radiohead, and the industrial groove of Daft Punk — yet remains unmistakably its own thing.
It’s worth noting that this directness is not new for Helgesen. He has always written from the gut; from the jazz-inflected household where he first played his family’s Steinway at four years old, through the formative years of Boston bands Brave New World and The Arm, sharing stages with Eric Burdon and the Smithereens, to the quieter but no less committed years building Scrimshaw Porn into a project with over 20,000 unique Spotify listeners and a curated playlist, Alt Indie Pop Nights, that has itself accumulated thousands of followers. The career arc is one of an artist who has consistently chosen truth over comfort, art over formula.
Epilogue is that choice distilled into four minutes of indie dream pop that refuses to behave. As closing statements go, it sounds less like an ending than a warning.
Epilogue is out now on all platforms.
