FAVORITES OF 2025!
8/25/26 ADDS
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ABOUT
FERN MURPHY
via negative (s/r)
Add date: 7.31.2026
Release date: 8.4.2026
Links:
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Bandcamp
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Spotify
Tidal
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via negative is the sophomore album by Indianapolis shoegaze band Fern Murphy. Conceived over several years, the record was primarily written and produced during the year surrounding the birth of founding member Gabriel Adams’ daughter — with most songs written in the six months preceding her arrival and recorded in the six months following.
The album’s title is a play on the philosophical concept via negativa, interpreted more literally as “the negative way.” The uneasy spaces we inhabit — fear, anxiety, grief, and vulnerability, are not obstacles to overcome, but conditions that shape us. The record lingers in these tensions and considers how discomfort, fragility, and uncertainty give contour to experience. Rather than presenting hardship as something to conquer, via negative reflects on how one is formed in periods of challenge and uncertainty — how negative space gives shape to what matters most.
Drawing on grief, anxiety, unconditional love, joy, shame, and uncertainty, via negative is a concise, introspective album that deepens the band’s formidable makeup. It features Fern Murphy’s foundational musical elements curated by Gabe Adams, expanded psych-gaze and genre-bending guitar work from Travis Brown, melodic wandering bass lines from Jason Bales, complex choral vocal arrangements from Leah Foster, and jazz-inflected drumming from Gilberto Huerta that brings a fluid, unpredictable pulse to the band’s shoegaze foundation.
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
via negative is the sophomore album by Indianapolis shoegaze band Fern Murphy. Conceived over several years, the record was primarily written and produced during the year surrounding the birth of founding member Gabriel Adams’ daughter — with most songs written in the six months preceding her arrival and recorded in the six months following.
The album’s title is a play on the philosophical concept via negativa, interpreted more literally as “the negative way.” The uneasy spaces we inhabit — fear, anxiety, grief, and vulnerability, are not obstacles to overcome, but conditions that shape us. The record lingers in these tensions and considers how discomfort, fragility, and uncertainty give contour to experience. Rather than presenting hardship as something to conquer, via negative reflects on how one is formed in periods of challenge and uncertainty — how negative space gives shape to what matters most.
Drawing on grief, anxiety, unconditional love, joy, shame, and uncertainty, via negative is a concise, introspective album that deepens the band’s formidable makeup. It features Fern Murphy’s foundational musical elements curated by Gabe Adams, expanded psych-gaze and genre-bending guitar work from Travis Brown, melodic wandering bass lines from Jason Bales, complex choral vocal arrangements from Leah Foster, and jazz-inflected drumming from Gilberto Huerta that brings a fluid, unpredictable pulse to the band’s shoegaze foundation.