Aaron Perrino has never made a comfortable record, and ‘The Middle Ages’ is the furthest thing from comfortable he’s ever put his name to. The sixth Sheila Divine album is out now on Trash Casual, arriving alongside new single “I Climbed Inside A Whale,” and it’s a deeply human document of grief, rage, love, and the particular exhaustion of being a thinking person alive in this moment.
Perrino describes the album’s emotional territory without flinching. “All of my pissed off Gen X angst about aging, the failure of capitalism, death, heartbreak and what the future holds in the back half of my life where everything is so grim.” That’s not a selling point, it’s a statement of purpose, and ‘The Middle Ages’ delivers on every word of it.
10 new tracks navigate the full range of lived experience. The wrenching loss of his mother. Parental anxiety about his children’s futures. The strains of congested city life, fractured relationships, and genuine fury at the state of the nation. Album opener “Gods Of War” opens with weighty soundscapes and guttural yells. The title track sustains a tense relentlessness throughout. “We Once Burned” carries embittered fatigue in every bar.
But ‘The Middle Ages’ isn’t without light. “Celebrate The End” finds wonder inside loss. “Hurry Up” builds into something genuinely anthemic. And “The Apocalypse ellell ell” places the refrain “the apocalypse sells, die, die” directly alongside repeated declarations of “Well I have hope,” a collision that captures the album’s entire emotional architecture in a single track.
Perrino has assembled a strong lineup of Boston scene allies for the record. Will Claflin and Steven Lord handle guitars, Paul Buckley plays drums, and Andy Rooney holds down bass. Mixing comes from Wally Gagel, known for his work with Cold War Kids and Superchunk, and mastering from Pete Weiss, whose credits include Morphine and Juliana Hatfield.
Collaboration has always been central to how Perrino works. “The more people that touch it, the more it manifests into something,” he says. The Sheila Divine has spent decades confounding expectations, from breaking out with college radio hit “Hum” on Roadrunner Records to building a cult following in the Belgian indie rock market. ‘The Middle Ages’ is the next chapter from a songwriter who refuses, as he puts it, “to live in a world where people trade empathy for apathy, curiosity for cruelty, humility for hubris.”