Cruz Beckham
James Veck-Gilodi’s seventh Deaf Havana album examines the gap between recognising a pattern and escaping it.
Deaf Havana’s seventh album, ‘We’re Never Getting Out’, does not frame change as a clean before-and-after story. Its title suggests entrapment, while James Veck-Gilodi’s writing returns to habits, relationships and self-punishment that remain difficult to leave behind even once their cost is understood. Across ‘Carousel’, ‘Hurts To Be Lonely’ and ‘Lawn Tennis’, the record occupies an uncomfortable position: knowing something has to alter while still moving towards the same painful result.
In Dork’s August 2025 report on ‘Carousel’, Veck-Gilodi described wanting to change himself but said he had previously answered mistakes by punishing himself, telling himself he hated himself and “cosplaying as a completely different person instead”. That distinction is central to the album. Change is not presented as becoming unrecognisable, or as a tidy reinvention designed to erase the past. Instead, he described taking the best parts of what he had done and applying them without trying to “totally change” who he was.
That makes the record’s self-criticism more complicated ...