Album Review: The Cross Sea – The Cross Sea

Published On: February 14th, 2026|

Anna Mērnieks-Duffield (Beams, Ace of Wands) is the tip of a triumvirate that reimagines noise, folk, and rock on The Cross Sea’s self-titled LP.

The album finds Mērnieks-Duffield, Kevin S. McMahon, and Daniel Liss adopting subject matter that is often the purview of folk music and catapulting it into sounds that are as much architecture as music at points.

The Cross Sea came about as a result of Mērnieks-Duffield discovering her long-awaited pregnancy, leading to a creative impulse that led to this collective of artists working together on tracks that investigate the nature of love, fear, conflict, and existential unravelling, as well as the relentless pull of the muse.

McMahon and Liss are vocalists in their own right, but here, they allow the voice of Mērnieks-Duffield to be the emotional and lyrical centre of The Cross Sea’s eight tracks. McMahon, meanwhile, has worked with Swans in the past, and I’m certain that has played a role in the noisy expressiveness of the first half of the album. Liss, in turn, brings so much passion and structure – and its opposite – when required through the tonal and textural ebb and flow that marks much of the songs.

If I were to pick two albums that would make an equally suitable trio with The Cross Sea, I’d plump for Ethel Cain’s Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You and Fairport Conventions’ Unhalfbricking. The two are over half a century apart, but together, they help to understand the brooding rock pastoralism and deconstruction of folk we hear on this album.

Neither of those albums, however, takes that into the same abstract and occasionally doom-laden territory as we are treated to here – I’m sure I hear a distorted ultrasound on Alien (Hold On to What You Love), for example. Even on the light textures of So It Goes, with two voices and a banjo dominating, the band soon pushes what a song should be and how we should experience it almost to breaking point.

As the album rounds off with The Midwest, we get to experience each musician at their most exposed, laying themselves and their emotions bare for all to see. From start to finish, this is a remarkable piece of work.

The Cross Sea was released on the 13th of February and is available in digital and CD formats on Bandcamp. For streaming options and news on the upcoming launch party for the album on the 20th of this month, follow The Cross Sea on Instagram.