Widemouth’s ‘No Gasoline’ Turns a College Flyer Into a Confident Debut

Mak Carnahan posted a flyer looking for musicians at Northwestern University. Jamie Eder answered. Drummer Lily Mitchell and bassist Pat Pilch soon completed the lineup. Most campus band formations drift into dorm-room anecdotes, but Widemouth took a different turn. Their debut album, No Gasoline, arrived this month with a quiet confidence that separates it from typical first efforts.

The record opens with “I Wish You Passed on a Little Anger,” a duet that pairs nostalgia with present tense clarity. Across ten tracks, the band works a folk-rock vein that owes something to Big Thief, a shared reference point among members, but sharpens it with a careful sense of dynamics. On “Hotel Pool,” a grungy guitar tone cuts through the usual calm, while Carnahan’s vocal bends with an expressive strain. Lyricism remains a constant. “Pinecone” maps the slow stretch of silence into adulthood, and the title track wrestles with the limits of self-revelation. “Water,” written in memory of a mother figure, turns domestic routines into an understanding of how one life touches another.

The precision of these songs doesn’t cancel out their looseness. Widem