h. pruz, Cornfed, Theydevil, Angus Honeymoon
West Philly house show
Philadelphia
Feb. 9, 2026
I’m beginning to wonder if this particularly-cold-and-gnarly winter is flattening time. How many house shows will I attend on Mondays this season? Is Monday even Monday when the season’s so monotone, so unyielding? The groundhog predicted a long winter, right? I think of that beautiful monologue in Groundhog Day (a Letterbox’d top 4 of mine, for real; judge my corny movie tastes all you want) where Bill Murray’s Phil says he “couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter,” and I’m mostly there too: I don’t mind the repetition. Good for hunkering down and getting to work, especially after the year of traveling I had in 2025. But others are out there braving the elements on the road, and I salute them: last night I walked to a house nearby to catch h. pruz and Cornfed for a self-described “cozy solo diy tour” of mostly houses and DM-for-address situations.
And the situation last night was definitely cozy, packed out with guests peering through an archway into a middle room where the artists performed, jackets and coats in stacks on the balustrade. A laptop on the floor sent YouTube videos to a tiny projector, draping the musicians in calm, natural scenes; the kitchen was converted into a green room and deads zone, storing cases and amps (“deads” are empty instrument cases! Always thought that was a little morbid).
The Ohio-based Cornfed is usually a band, but for this run of shows, singer and guitarist Alec Cox played solo, singing and switching between electric and acoustic guitars. Cox has a songwriting sensibility that felt like what might happen if Wishy’s Kevin Krauter and Hovvdy’s Will Taylor started a project together: effortlessly melodic, all open-tuning drones, off-balance meters, and gently-strummed power chords shuffling through with a strong-enough groove that his right hand conjured the whole rhythm section. I loved the shared-camaraderie feeling I got from a lyric about driving from Philly to Ohio (been there, done that) and seeing Philly locals Florry rip a gig in Fishtown, spying Kurt Vile in attendance, but overall – if you’ll permit me this slight criticism – I felt the lyrics were a little too diaristic for my tastes, a little too much telling and not enough showing, or telling without bringing me somewhere unexpected. Not that there’s anything wrong with raw, direct, first-thought-best-thought lyricism in general, and I cherish anyone’s vulnerability in getting up and singing in front of strangers like this; I just liked the music better than the words, especially toward the end when Hannah Pruzinsky (aka h. pruz) joined in on harmonies.
h. pruz, an Allentown native based in Brooklyn, has a unique melodic style that I can’t quite put my finger on – theirs is also, especially in solo performance, a raw and vulnerable sound, finding the middle ballpark between nocturnal folk, ambient music and dream-pop. For their first song, they accompanied themself with a pre-recorded ambient loop, swelled in and out with a volume pedal, a supportive soundscape with its own sonic interests. Live, pruz is a restlessly curious sound explorer, switching between tunings, instruments and textures, from steel-wool distortion to far-reaching ambiance. (This is especially clear on the far-more expansive textures and instrumentation on their new album Red sky at morning, which features twelve musicians and an array of modular synths and keyboards.) At the center is a singing voice filled with delicate intention, singing from a low resting heart rate, then reaching for outer edges of their range, hinting at the concept of breaking without doing it; their performance embodied vulnerability as strength. They closed with a slow, breathtaking waltz called "Canyon," the plucked chords of pruz and Cox’s guitars conjuring the feeling of drifting weightlessly through an ice sculpture garden, finishing with pruz whistling a plaintive melody that hit me in the gut. Time stood still, and like Phil, I didn’t mind one bit.
