$uicideboy$ – Stop Staring At the Shadows

Review

With Stop Staring at the Shadows, $uicideboy$ continue their descent into the dark corners of self-destruction, addiction, and existential exhaustion — but this time, it’s delivered with a sharper focus and tighter execution. Released in 2020, the album clocks in at a brisk half hour, yet it feels like a full emotional purge. Ruby da Cherry and $crim trade verses like diary entries soaked in codeine and regret, each bar teetering between self-awareness and collapse. The production, icy and minimal, finds new ways to make emptiness sound lush — “…And to Those I Love, Thanks for Sticking Around” in particular hits like a farewell note written under flickering fluorescent light.

What keeps Shadows compelling is its paradoxical beauty: a record drenched in despair that somehow radiates catharsis. There’s no clear arc of redemption here — just the familiar tug-of-war between wanting to die and wanting to live — but that tension is the $uicideboy$ ethos. It’s music for those who recognize the darkness and keep walking through it anyway. Stop Staring at the Shadows doesn’t reinvent the duo, but it captures them at their most distilled — raw, wounded, and unflinchingly human. - Dylan