Love Letter 'Everyone Wants Something Beautiful'

Everyone Wants Something Beautiful is the debut full-length from Love Letter, a New England hardcore band featuring Quinn Murphy of Verse alongside founding Defeater members Jay Maas and Andrew Reitz.

Across ten songs, Love Letter channel decades of experience in hardcore into something urgent, melodic, and deeply personal. The album explores generational trauma, grief, self-awareness, mental health, and the ways pain can be carried forward or projected onto the people around us, pairing those themes with emotionally charged hardcore and post-hardcore that never loses its sense of momentum.

Songs like “New Anthemic,” “Wellness Checks and Dead Friends,” “Misanthropic Holiday or Vacation,” “Settlements,” and “Panic Disordinary” move between cathartic intensity and quieter moments of reflection, giving Quinn Murphy’s lyrics room to hit with the same directness that made Verse so powerful.

Guitarist Jay Maas, whose production work includes records by Bane, Counterparts, and Title Fight, engineered the album with bassist David Alcan, while Dave McNair handled mastering. Love Letter also features guitarist Matthew Spence and drummer Andrew Reitz, bringing together musicians with a shared history that stretches back more than two decades.

Released by Iodine Recordings, Everyone Wants Something Beautiful sits firmly in the lineage of New England hardcore while pushing toward something more mature, vulnerable, and expansive.