Album Review: Joshua Burnside, It's Not Going To Be Okay

Written in the aftermath of his best friend Dean Jendoubi's death, Joshua Burnside’s latest LP is his most unguarded to date. Where his acclaimed 2025 record Teeth Of Time leaned into folklore and the surreal via electronica-laced folk, It’s Not Going to be Okay is more direct.

It pares things down, musically and lyrically, focusing on the everyday rituals, objects, places and memories that have become tokens of grief. The devastating 'With You' begins as a sweet song of friendship – of childhood tennis games and the sound of his friend’s snare drum – before ending with Burnside wanting to be laid in the earth alongside the casket.

Driving acoustic guitars on ‘The Last Armchair’ frame a piece of Ikea furniture as a witness to the struggles of coping with adulthood, while 'Something Else' reflects on binge-watching The X-Files, doomscrolling, and heavy drinking as coping mechanisms.

Anger seeps through on the title track, the album's most political moment, as math-rock riffs spit and twirl around Burnside cataloguing of a corrupt world. It’s not all heavy. ‘Good Times Are Comin’ is sweeter and optimistic, recalling a fondness for playing video games all night, and how those days might return, even if Burnside can’t see when right now.

It’s Not Going To Be Okay shows that, sometimes, talking plainly is more potent than allegory.

9/10