Album Review: Favourite Armchair – Favourite Armchair

Favourite Armchair cut their own cloth on their self-titled album, idiosyncratic, dynamic, and stylish in a bohemian and adventurist style.

Based in Woonsocket, a semi-rural city on the Rhode Island border with Massachusetts, the band has a sound that is rustic, almost lived-in. Dan Roda and Trevor Chisholm have assembled a large cast of friends to create the not-quite-folk experimentalism of the LP, one where familiar sounds veer off in unexpected and sometimes unsettling diversions.

It’s something that is at its most florid on Theme from Oxygen Concentrator, Pt. 1 – the vocals and acoustic guitar are almost conventional, but the briefness of the song doesn’t prevent it from being full of ideas, seemingly random noises and harmonies forming their own shape. Edging towards hauntology, the unease comes from within the house, so to speak. Those themes also emerge later in the album, sounding different, psychedelic even, the vocals evoking comparisons with throat singing.

Woonsocket Moonshot is probably one of the best song titles you’ll hear this year, with what sounds like a prank call – unless Bummerstack is a real thing – flowing in and around an arrangement that has echoes of hauntology. The dialogue is entertaining, but in combination with the music, that concept of unease is again present. It’s like the band has taken inspiration from Scanner – the artist and the movie.

Deception might play a role in the album; the artwork would lead you to expect an excursion into folk and Americana, and Adagio for Wooden Spoon and Bongo gives you that. But again, the sound of snoring and what could be cicadas layered over a fragmented conversation about Bummerstack is not quite what you expect, even as you get fully absorbed into the track.

As to the lyrics, the band has disclosed that they “pit themes of persistence and love against natural decay in a world that feels as much happenstance as it is meticulously real and deliberate in both the austerity of its ramshackle construction and in the stalwart stateliness of its disrepair.”

They add, “These songs were conceived and written from often deeply personal and emotional prompts and then embellished and lifted up through the process of creation and collaboration with friends, with a premium placed on the imperfectness of humanity and a full eschewing of the use of artificial intelligence – unencumbered by traditional definitions of genre and song construction but filled with love.

They have described their music as the ‘Woonsocket sound,’ and it must be an interesting place. Useless fact here: it’s the location of CVS Health’s corporate HQ. But Favourite Armchair are a world apart from commerce, creating an ever-changing, calming mix of folk, indie, soundscapes and moodscapes that isn’t like anything else you’re likely to hear. A collection of musicians that get me wanting to revisit Scanner, Ivor Cutler, Quinten Smirhes, and Six Organs of Admittance are most certainly doing something right!

Favourite Armchair was released on the 17th of June, 2026, via Mountains Backdrop Records. The album can be downloaded on Bandcamp and is streaming on Spotify. Connect with the band on Instagram for more listening options and to get to know the band better.