Chris Broach made most of “Reality Sufferer” alone in his home studio, watching the country come apart in real time. The two-song solo EP arrives May 15 via City at Night Records and Sweet Cheetah Records.
Broach tracked, mixed, and mastered both songs himself at his studio Mass Energy and plays nearly every instrument across the record. Kevin Frank (Gauge, Haymarket Riot) handles bass on “Ministry of Truth,” and two session drummers split the kit between the two tracks.
Broach has been writing songs for over three decades. As one of the two singer-guitarists in Braid, he helped build the template for the literate, dynamic, structurally restless music that came to define Midwest emo and post-hardcore in the late ’90s. Reality Sufferer is that sensibility turned outward and sharpened.
The arrangements are dense and propulsive, riffs that fold back on themselves, hooks in 5 and 7, structures that simply don’t behave. Both songs trace back to the Dischord catalog and the post-hardcore that came out of it, but neither sounds like it’s looking backwards.
It’s also a protest record, though Broach isn’t reaching for slogans. The title track is about what it feels like to live inside a feed: the performance of identity, the politics that get sold back to listeners, the work of thinking for yourself anyway. “Ministry of Truth” pulls its name straight from Orwell, and it’s the bleaker of the two. A song about a country being propagandized by reactionary media and foreign actors, and a left that’s mistaking the comfort of online outrage for actual resistance.
“No one is going to save us but ourselves,” Broach says of the record.
Live, he’s playing as Chris Broach and The Foundation, with Frank on bass and Tommy Shiminetto (The Firebird Band) on drums, the first time the two have shared a stage in over 25 years. June takes them through Milwaukee and Chicago. In July, Broach heads to the UK supporting Hey Mercedes and also playing with Braid: The Dome in London on July 17, The Garage in Glasgow on July 19.
Live dates:
June 6, 2026, X-Ray Arcade, Milwaukee, WI
June 7, 2026, Cobra Lounge, Chicago, IL
July 17, 2026, The Dome, London, England (w/ Braid, Hey Mercedes)
July 19, 2026, The Garage, Glasgow, Scotland (w/ Braid, Hey Mercedes)
