In a dark gallery, looking into a bright room with snow-covered floors and a square hole cut from its center—this is how a viewer experiences A Cold Hole, an installation by artist Taryn Simon. But it’s not a static encounter: Watching from the gallery, you’ll routinely see someone enter the bright room, climb into the hole, and plunge into icy water beneath it. Simon sought to probe questions about public praise and personal desire. But when singer-songwriter Dana Foote saw the piece at an art museum in Western Massachusetts, the dark pit struck her as a powerful metaphor for a period of depression or stagnancy—a “psychological winter,” she’s called it.
Foote was in one such winter while writing Swallow the Knife, her latest record as Sir Chloe. Inspired by Simon’s piece, she started referring to this state as being “in the hole,” and named the opening track on her new album after it. “The thrill is gone/And nothing’s new,” she sings, despondent, over a crunch of guitars, “I’ve been in the hole.” It’s a bouncy, deceptively upbeat song, especially given the circumstance it describes—and a fitting opening for a record of combustible, cathartic indie rock that mulls dark themes.
Foote began recording music as part of her senior thesis at Bennington College; after a track from her first record went viral on TikTok, she landed a major-label deal, capping her 21st-century trajectory with a grungey, ’90s-inflected album, I Am the Dog. (The relationship with her label soured and they have since parted ways.) Her latest release follows in this vein, channeling PJ Harvey and the Pixies while detailing Foote’s experience extricating herself from an abusive relationship and her grief in the face of what she endured. “Go on and tell me you’re the victim/Go on and tell me I’m the cruel one,” she hisses over a plucky guitar riff on “Kiss,” then chews through the syllables of the fuzzed-out chorus. “I don’t want love,” she repeats, “I want revenge.” These are songs fueled by rage, but beset by migraines, secrets, shame, tears.
Foote is a commanding singer, her voice evoking a particular slice of the millennial canon: St. Vincent on the foreboding “Holy”; Metric’s Emily Haines on the swaggering “Forget It.” On “Complicated,” she’s haunted by the past, her voice nearly shaking then growing steadier: “I won’t forget the cold and seething sound/It wakes me up and follows me around.” She stretches her range on “Take It,” murmuring its verses and howling its chorus—and delivering the bridge as spoken word, a risky move that she mostly pulls off thanks to a cool, detached tone. These are compact, punchy songs; they rarely offer any real surprises, though they do, savvily and consistently, manage to generate a sticky riff or memorable hook within their first 30 seconds.
Swallow the Knife loses steam in the final stretch, slowing down to offer a handful of quasi-ballads: the newly infatuated “Eyes,” whose intro doesn’t not recall “Fade Into You”; the mournful “Too Much (Not Enough).” Its final track, “Candy,” is an extended metaphor about a toxic relationship—a partner who seems like a treat at first, but ultimately can’t offer anything of substance, only “aching teeth.” The song’s power rests in its simplicity: just fingerpicked guitar and Foote’s voice, which eventually resolves into a series of girl-group-inspired harmonies that start off sunny but become unsettled. After an album of angst, betrayal, and survival, it feels like a tactical retreat—like washing out a sour aftertaste to make way for something sweeter.
