Mission From Dog (Casey Hess) belongs to that breed of musicians the industry only remembers in hindsight. His name has circulated on Chicago club marquees for years, surfaced in podcasts, flickered on Spotify playlists somewhere around the fifteenth slot — and still remained in the shadow of major labels and algorithms.

There is a certain justice in that: Hess is a man who played punk-metal in high school with Wit’s End at Detroit bars alongside Stone Temple Pilots and Kid Rock, graduated from Berklee, relocated to Chicago, passed through the Asher Love project and its club orbit, lost his wife, rebuilt his life, and kept recording music. His biography reads denser than many albums, and it is precisely that density — biographical, emotional, instrumental — that defines the fourth Mission From Dog record.

“These Times Take Things” arrives two years after “Minor Third” (2024), an album on which Hess worked with electric sound more aggressively than usual. The new record is billed as his “most cohesive set of songs” — a phrase artists tend to reach for by the fourth release, once they have accumulated enough material to understand what exactly makes their songs theirs. In the case of Mission From Dog, the claim carries weight: the eleven tracks here — some newly written, some pulled from archives dating back twenty-five years — come together as a record where the authorial voice finally stops darting between genre poles and finds a stable footing.

The album contains eleven tracks, but the one you should pay close attention to first is “Weather The Storm”, a very apt choice for an opener: the guitars sway in a soft, inviting rhythm, the indie-rock texture supporting lyrics that immediately set the tone for the entire record. Mission From Dog sings with his characteristic quiet insistence — the vocal sits squarely in the center of the mix, without undue pressure, without trying to overpower the arrangement. The rhythmic work here deserves special notice: a blend of styles and timing creates a strange, almost hypnotic sense of calm. The song rocks gently, and you rock gently along with it.

“Proximity Countdown” continues the line established by the opening track, before the album reaches its two early peaks — “Om“ and “Up On A Fence“. These two songs are best heard back to back: they share the same intonation of gentle confidence, the guitars sound free and effortless, and the overall energy evokes a rare sensation of reassuring calm. Hess does here what he does best — builds songs that seem simple in structure but inside which something is constantly shifting and rearranging. In “Om”, the hypnotic element is pushed to the foreground: guitar parts layer upon one another, creating a feeling of an engulfing current. “Up On A Fence” is slightly more open in its sound, with air between the instruments — and that air lets the song breathe more easily. This is stylish, assured work.

“Walking The Hallways” keeps the album at a mid-tempo pace before “Kill The King” abruptly shifts the mood. This is where Mission From Dog reveals his darker side: the vocal here is deeper, deliberately submerged in the arrangement, dissolved in a dense, voluminous sound. The track hooks you from the very first bars with a sense of creeping unease that builds slowly and inexorably — and when that tension spills into a guitar solo, the effect is stunning. The solo here is one of the best on the album: aggressive just enough to shatter the quiet, and melodic enough to lodge itself in your head long after listening. For those drawn to darker indie-rock, “Kill The King” will be the entry point into this record.

“Home” and “Only Time Will Tell” give the album a breather before its second climax. “Fuck You With Love” — a five-minute track where Hess allows himself to truly play with rhythm. The extended format works here: the song unfolds gradually, layer by layer, showcasing the full range of the songwriter’s capabilities — from restrained acoustic passages to electric tension. The timing of the song lets it breathe.

“The Great Unknown” leads toward the finale, but the true closing statement is “A Ghost In The Trees (Song for Jane)” — a dedication that begins with a gripping intro, slowly expanding into a powerful, white-hot rock sound. Knowing Hess‘s biography — the loss of his first wife Paula, the years spent rebuilding himself, and now watching Jane, his current wife’s mother, slowly fade from dementia — listening to this track is harder than listening to the rest. The guitars deliver one of the most powerful sounds on the album, and the vocal carries a story you want to follow to its very end. This is a closing track that truly closes — it places a full stop, draws a conclusion, and leaves the listener with a clear sense of completeness. In terms of both impact and execution, “A Ghost In The Trees” is one of the most striking moments across the entire Mission From Dog discography.

Verdict:

Mission From Dog has been making music for over thirty years. Hess‘s journey from Detroit’s teenage punk bars to Chicago’s studios is the story of a musician who works with a consistency that few can claim in an era oversaturated with rapid-fire releases, two albums a year, and the singles economy. “These Times Take Things” is Mission From Dog‘s fourth full-length album, and it sounds exactly the way a fourth album should sound from a person with this trajectory: confident, mature, and with a precise understanding of his own strengths.

Unlike his previous records, Hess has stopped trying to be everything at once. The post-grunge alloy of beauty, darkness, and hope — a formula Hess has been working with for a long time — finally finds its balance here. The album breathes, sways, erupts in places, and returns to silence with an organic ease that previous recordings had to achieve through effort.

Eleven tracks — including material that sat on the shelf for a quarter of a century — are assembled into a sequence where not a single song feels superfluous. Hess describes this album as a series of meditations on the fragility of the mind, the fleeting nature of moments, and the search for beauty in the everyday. These are big words, and in music such declarations often remain just that — declarations. Here, they are realized. “Weather The Storm” sets a swaying rhythm, “Om” and “Up On A Fence” deepen it, “Kill The King” tears it apart, “Fuck You With Love” stretches it out, and “A Ghost In The Trees” gathers it all back together and lets go. The album is constructed as a unified statement, and you feel that on a front-to-back listen.

Marriage, children, the loss of a wife, a cross-country move, a new marriage, a new life — all of it is present in his songs as texture, tone, choice of duration and dynamics. “These Times Take Things” is an album made by a man who knows what time takes away, and who records music with that knowledge inside him. One of the most intriguing new releases this March. Do not miss it.

The album is out March 13.

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