Gold Souls "Anodes" Album Review: The cinematic, melodic alt-rock duo that took BookTok by storm
- Devinney Rexrode
- Jun 26
- 4 min read
Devinney Rexrode | June 2026
If you love modern alternative rock, darker aesthetics, and maybe are a part of the BookTok community, then Gold Souls is a duo you should add to your radar. With melodic and cinematic elements not only in their visuals but also in their sound and overall branding, they have a touch often missing in music.
You feel what they want you to, see what they need you to, and cause you to experience whatever they need for the songs to hit you like a brick wall.
Gold Souls is everything you could want in an emotionally driven duo. With their moody aesthetics and genre-blending sound, they will keep you coming back for more, especially with their newest album, “Anodes”, which came out on the 26 May.
“Anodes” is full of atmospheric sounds, dark, twisting lyrics, and tastefully applied autotune that fits the songs' needs. They know exactly how to structure the lyrics and songs themselves to make them emotional and raw. The riffs and drum lines are heavy without them overtaking the vocals. Their songs are even sensual at times, which is why this duo has a great BookTok sound.
This album takes a darker turn than some of the older works in their discography. It’s a welcoming change, and one that isn’t too far off from their vibes. With broodier lyrics, slightly heavier vibes in their songs, and more eerie elements to their visuals and sounds. With “Anodes” taking a more twisted turn, we get an album laced with darker, sexier, flirty tones, and its subversive style allows you to get lost in the stories being woven before our eyes and ears.
With their alt-rock aesthetics and soulful yet edgy lyrics, they can appeal to adult fans as much as to teen fans through their TikTok virality, allowing both groups to enjoy their music and form their own subsections within the audience.
I love the structure of this album, with an intro, an intermission piece, and an outro; they build and create a nice flow with the songs. This is something I miss about many 2000s albums that have been used less over time. The intro-to-outro style of albums is an underused art, and I love that Gold Souls used this format on “Anodes.”
Their music is overall easy to relate to, with a lot of dark-romance themes, and it holds its own atmospheric vibes that can match the scenery in darker-scene fantasy, romanticism, and dark academia extremely well.
This album is laced with voice notes that guide us through a story that unfolds from song to song. They have soft instrumentals behind the duo’s voices that lead from one song's topic to the next. It’s a really nice niche to play into for BookTok listeners!
This duo expresses great romantic (romance & fantasy mixed) vibes, as well as dark romance, from the songs to the voice notes. It’s fun and gives them a great way to brand themselves as well as a new market to open to.
Some of my personal favourite songs off the album are “manifesto”, “Ketamine”, and “Misakes”. These songs incorporate some really cool sounds and techniques to create their structure. “Ketamine” is probably my top song from this album. I love the lyrics, structure, and tone of this song in particular. I love my obsession-based love songs, and “Ketamine” is just that.
For the BookTok people, I recommend “Ketamine”, as well as “Only In The Dark” and “Mistakes” from the “Anodes” album. They get a little more streamy in these songs with songs that carry a friends-with-benefits feel, like “Only In The Dark,” to the outright heated lyrics of “Mistakes,” this duo is made for yearning and flirting.
They have the same BookTok character vibes for themselves and their brand as VOLIA built for itself, but with an alt-badboy or cursed-prince twist that sets them apart. This duo especially lends itself to enemies-to-lovers and good-girl-bad-boy yearning tropes.
With this element in their marketing, along with their sound and overall brand, they have created a following that spans platforms and into listeners' other hobbies. I would love to see Gold Souls land more collabs on songs and tours, and also be in sync for some book-related movies and writer collabs. I think one thing more music-related artists need to do is collaborate with artists from other media, like visual artists and writers. Seeing them be some of the first to collab with a author would be amazing, honestly!
I believe Gold Souls has a great future in music. They have already found virality on TikTok and Instagram, and I can only see them climbing from here! They have a great sound and solid branding that is very in-vibe. We just need them to land a novel-to-movie sync placement for the book lovers now!
Follow Gold Souls on social media!
