I don’t know if I’ve ever been so quickly immersed in a record when I first put on WE WERE MADE PREY. Kathryn Joseph‘s fourth album (out today, May 30) served as my introduction to her music – while she’s had success and acclaim since her first release in 2015, WE WERE MADE PREY.1 is something somewhat new to her as well.
Through her three records released since 2015, Joseph has a reputation for haunting storytelling. But WE WERE MADE PREY. doesn’t just haunt, it prowls, an album that feels instinctual and relentless. After years of honing her art in the shadowy corners of piano-driven confessionals, Joseph emerges here with a record that’s colder, more industrial, and bracingly animalistic, a reinvention that still clings to her intimate, vulnerable core.
This new era in Joseph’s discography begins with an opening trilogy that feels like being lost in the woods. “WOLF.” is a fever dream of want and need. Opening lyric “I’m a wolf and you’re full of blood” sets the tone, the song circling like a predator. It’s primal, immediate, and unflinching, with a pulsing heartbeat and eerie synth stabs.
“DARK.” follows with no percussion to tether it, just Joseph’s voice, raw and flickering, and a low-end synth drone that feels like the looming threat. “HARBOUR.”, the lead single, has a ritualistic, industrial tone and lyrics narrating the death of a mysterious character, asking “are you a harbour / or a half-broken bone?”
These songs push beyond the familiar piano-and-voice minimalism of Joseph’s earlier work, embracing a new palette of electronic textures and menacing synths conjured with returning producer Lomond Campbell. The result is an album that feels both rooted and unmoored: grounded in Joseph’s visceral lyrics and vocals, but floating in a world of coldness that echo the harsh beauty of the Scottish landscape where the record was conceived.
WE WERE MADE PREY. is an album of survival and transformation. The animal motifs that thread through the record—wolf, deer, prey—speak to the tension between vulnerability and ferocity. On “BEFORE.” Joseph’s voice sharpens into seething anger, chanting “Before they were gone…” over synth layers that throb with restraint and menace.
Album centrepiece “DEER.” is quieter, almost hopeless, mourning a monumental loss: “Here too soon and you’re gone too fast / first born son has become my last.” In “ROADKILL.” she lays it all bare: a grim, haunted meditation on what it means to keep moving forward when everything around you is broken.
The album’s closer, “FIRE.”, ties these themes together. Joseph’s voice is weary but resolute, her words a farewell to someone she loves. “I am a wolf now / so I have to go,” she sings.
What’s striking about WE WERE MADE PREY. is how it never loses touch with the intensity that has defined Joseph’s songwriting. Even as the arrangements stretch out into industrial ritual and electronic minimalism, her voice—trembling, unguarded—remains the unbroken thread. It’s an album that embraces the animal instinct within: the hunger, the rage, and the quiet grace that comes with surviving.
