Sadurn's 'The Underworld' Is a Quietly Devastating Second Record
Sadurn began as G DeGroot’s solo project in 2017 and has since hardened into a proper Philadelphia four-piece — DeGroot on guitar and songwriting, Jon Cox on second guitar, Tabitha Ahnert on bass, Amelia Swain on drums. The Underworld took a while: recording started in January 2024, in a house in the Poconos rather than a studio, and you can hear the room in it. Paste’s review carried a B+ and the standfirst “quietly stunning,” while being clear-eyed that the album is “unabashedly bleak” and offers “no explicit demonstrations of hope.” Both halves of that are the point.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Ahnert’s bass is the structural member here. The arrangements are thin by design — often just two guitars and a voice — so the low-end carries the harmonic information that a piano or a pad would carry on a busier record. It moves slowly and lands on the root late, which is why these songs feel like they’re leaning forward.
The Spatial Dynamics: Recording in a house instead of a booth means the reverb is real and short. Nothing is drenched. When the harmonica arrives on “after we went under the bridge” it sits in the same air as everything else rather than floating above it, and that single textural decision does more for intimacy than any plugin would.
Standout Performance
DeGroot’s phrasing. Stereogum, writing up the single “whole thing,” clocked “the soft twang in their voice” and said the song would “feel so right in a neon-lit dive bar” — then added that “the guitar solo on the bridge is superb, too.” It is.
Why It’s Certified
“never tell me” was the early single Paste called stunning, and it’s the most immediate thing here. But the record’s argument is made by “only angels,” an eight-minute closer built on a loop that keeps circling back and refusing to resolve. Nine songs, no filler, no consolation offered. Certified great.