Siem Reap - Wishin' I Was Fishin'

When Gilles Demolder (Oathbreaker, Wiegedood) first introduced Siem Reap with Now What?, it felt like overhearing someone whisper into a dictaphone — raw, unfiltered, and a little too honest. Wishin’ I Was Fishin’, his second album, doesn’t abandon that intimacy but blows it wide open. Written together with longtime friends & collaborators Wim Coppers and Jasper Hollevoet, the songs trade lo-fi solitude for something sharper and more dynamic, without losing the crooked grin behind the sadness.

The record opens with Oliver Kahn, where Demolder compares his own childhood scars and a crushing breakup to the rage of the legendary German goalkeeper. It’s a sports metaphor that’s both devastating and absurd — a thesis statement for the album’s tone. That same balance runs through The Purpose of Wind Chimes, which finds an odd sort of peace in the memory of a chain-smoking grandfather releasing his parakeets, turning family grief into something both tragic and funny.

On Live Love Leave, gentrifiers and wine-bar culture become the target, as bar room ambiance collides with bitter observations about privilege and belonging. Ballerinas is a different kind of confrontation — an open letter to himself, telling the artist to shut up and stop whining. Then there’s Friends in the Music Business, a song that tears into the small talk, cockroach hotels, and ego trips of touring life with a venom that feels earned.

Elsewhere, Lotus digs into the half-truths and facades of growing up, peeling back layers with a mix of tenderness and contempt, while Whirlpool closes the record in a haze of circular self-sabotage — a song that feels like staring at the ceiling at 4 a.m., caught in loops you can’t break. Each track plays like a short story: too specific to be fictional, too strange to be entirely made up.

What ties everything together is Demolder’s voice, plainspoken and dry, never afraid to sit in contradictions — shame and humor, ego and collapse, grief and absurdity. Wishin’ I Was Fishin’ isn’t a clean break from his past in heavy music, but another kind of heaviness entirely: one dressed in bathrobes, bird metaphors, and late-night karaoke glow, holding a mirror up and laughing quietly at what it sees.