Grief walks in wearing a synth patch and a Glaswegian accent — and it sounds incredible.
Some albums announce themselves politely. ‘Ultimate Buzz’ — the debut LP from The Leaving, the duo of Martin Doherty (CHVRCHES) and Jonny Scott — is not one of those albums. It kicks the door open. The band have just dropped their third single, Fluoxetine, and it’s the clearest picture yet of what these two are building: something emotionally sprawling, sonically precise, and deeply, uncomfortably honest.
Fluoxetine is a song about the specific terror of watching someone you love suffer while feeling completely useless. Born from insomnia, hallucination, and fleeting euphoria — the duo’s own words — the track wrestles with existential doubt, love, belief, loss, and the desperate desire to absorb someone else’s pain. It’s the moment where sorrow transforms into strength. Heavy stuff. Brilliant stuff.
“Fluoxetine finds The Leaving staring straight into grief and coming back changed… born from insomnia, hallucination, and fleeting euphoria, it captures the moment sorrow transforms into strength.”
The Leaving is, on paper, a supergroup-ish side project — but that framing undersells it badly. Doherty and Scott are LA-based expats of the Glasgow scene, longtime friends who’ve racked up credits with CHVRCHES, The Twilight Sad, Aerogramme, Mogwai, and Idlewild between them. This record isn’t a footnote to those careers. It sounds like the thing they’ve been quietly building toward their whole lives.
Stereogum called debut single Saved a “futuristic anthem” — and it’s easy to hear why. The Leaving aren’t nostalgic for the Glaswegian post-rock and synth-pop worlds they came up in. They’re doing something stranger and more personal with those raw materials. Three singles in, the picture is coming into sharp, thrilling focus.
🎵 Stream Fluoxetine
👉 Listen here | Pre-Save ‘Ultimate Buzz’ | Pre-Order Vinyl
‘Ultimate Buzz’ — Track list
- Atmosphere
- Fluoxetine (single)
- Pray (single)
- Speak
- Sing
- Saved (single)
- Cursed
- Creatures
- Ddust
’Ultimate Buzz’ drops April 24 via Avenue A / Futures ✦ / Virgin Records. Nine tracks. Vinyl up for pre-order via Diggers Factory. Live dates incoming. This is going to be a whole thing.
Who Is The Leaving?
Martin Doherty (aka Doko) is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer — one third of Glasgow synth-pop giants CHVRCHES. Now LA-based, he’s clearly been saving up a lot to say.
Jonny Scott is a quiet legend of the Scottish indie and post-rock world, with a résumé running through The Twilight Sad, Aerogramme, Mogwai, and Idlewild. The kind of collaborator who makes everyone in the room sound better.
Born from a period of deep personal upheaval and creative rediscovery, The Leaving present an unfiltered body of music forged in grief, rebuilt through friendship, and electrified by a decades-long creative kinship. Stay tuned for news of debut live shows in the coming weeks.
Follow The Leaving
- 🛒 Vinyl Pre-Order – Diggers Factory
- 📸 @theleaving on Instagram
- 📸 @realdoko (Martin Doherty) on Instagram
- 🏷️ Avenue A Records
- 🏷️ Futures ✦
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