The Naarm-based artist closes his new EP with a tender, experimental tribute to his wife, proving that growth sounds like peace.
On it’s not a race, the closing title track from his forthcoming EP, Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Darcy Hemingway, known as mumdeathcake, delivers a stunning curveball.
After an EP spent exploring unstable relationships and mental health through fuzzy, grinding garage-rock textures, this final track pulls back the curtain to reveal a beating, tender heart.
It’s a sappy love song for his wife, and it’s utterly disarming.
As a project, mumdeathcake has always thrived on immediacy.
Hemingway’s sound is deliberately unpolished, a raw blend of indie rock grit and dreamy bedroom production that feels less like a performance and more like an overheard conversation.
This foundation is key to why it’s not a race works so beautifully. It retains the project’s signature blown-out textures but channels them into something gentle.
The result is an experiment in sonic warmth, pushing the boundaries of what mumdeathcake can be while staying true to its core ethos of honesty.
For an artist who built his name on brutally honest explorations of instability and unhealthy coping mechanisms (as seen on the EP’s opener ‘billy no mates’), this song represents a powerful evolution.
Hemingway himself notes it’s a reminder to appreciate the small things, to protect one’s peace.
It’s the logical, earned conclusion to an EP about breaking cycles of co-dependence and losing oneself, the moment where, having done the work, you find the person you were looking for was beside you all along.
With it’s not a race our in the world and live shows planned for late 2026, mumdeathcake is stepping into a new phase.
If this track is any indication, it’s one where vulnerability isn’t just about pain, but about the radical, freeing act of letting love in.
