Today, Lou Salome — the NYC-based duo of Leah Hennessey and Jack Kilmer — share their debut album, Just Something You Cared About In High School. They’ll play an album release show this coming Monday 11/24 in NYC at Night Club 101, more info below.

“Taking being a wild romantic so seriously is important to the band,” Hennessey tells Line Of Best Fit, and Lou Salome emphatically puts that intention into action, setting high-stakes romanticism and teenage-brained oblivion-chasing to a mix of collagist indie rock, glam-addled power-pop, narcotic slowcore, and doe-eyed scuzz. It’s a bewitching project, powered by Hennessey and Kilmer’s undeniable creative chemistry and dramatic vocal interplay.

Listen to Just Something You Cared About In High School,  out now via Babe City Records, here.

Earlier this week, they shared the almost-title track “High School,” a gnarled beatnik guitar seance that calls to mind the diaristic deadpan of Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw or Kim Deal’s trash culture-glorifying screed-poems for Sonic Youth. Hennessey’s lyrics read like a vision channeled by an after-school coven leader:

It’s the start of a new religion
An ecstatic cult of anhedonia
Beyond the pleasure principle into pure graphic simple meaning
New hieroglyphics
Real communication
But she’s just someone’s sister
She’s just a symbol
She’s just something you cared about in high school

“High School” single art

While Just Something You Cared About In High School is a worthy subject of spot-the-influence conjecture — perhaps start with Elastica, Broken Social Scene, Swearin’, The House Of Love, Sebadoh, Supergrass, or Galaxie 500 — its real draw is the push-and-pull between its two principles. Hennessey is the punk-mystic, alternately imperious and yearning; Kilmer plays the wide-eyed dreamer, with a quivering but robustly melodious voice somewhere between New Order’s Bernard Sumner and The Lemonheads’ Evan Dando.

This dynamic plays out throughout Just Something You Cared About In High School, a chronicle of electric teenage dreams imbued with supernatural consequence and imperfect expressions of intimacy. While not exactly a concept album, Just Something You Cared About in High School is cinematic in scope, charting the alchemical process of infatuation, the spark of desire, the devastation of tragedy, and the allure of dream pop’s nebulous notion of salvation.

There’s no shortage of highlights. The fuzz bass and breathy come-ons of “Enemies To Lovers” heightens the fizzing-over of its shouted chorus, while the video is intimate, on the verge of being voyeuristic — a canny, masterful depiction of longing that they broke down for the i enjoy music newsletter. Meanwhile, “Your Eyes Immaculate” strikes “a surprising dance between delicate, airy dream pop and driving alt-rock” (Line of Best Fit), while “WTV U Want” conjures a synthesis of riot grrrl velocity and power-ballad romance. There’s a song for Keanu Reeves, another for Han Solo, and a reflective album opener of epic proportions for none other than Achilles — all revealing the record’s preoccupation with the twisted, self-mythologizing logic of nostalgia.

Jack — a celebrated indie actor in films like Palo Alto and Lord of Chaos — and Leah — a director known for her work on John Early: Now More Than Ever and Zhe Zhe — first met in an acting class in New York where, during a snowstorm, they were assigned the campfire scene from My Own Private Idaho. They quickly discovered a shared obsession with obscure British post-punk and started playing shows immediately, getting the chance to open for underground legends like Ian Svenonius and Christeene.