Hamilton Duo Allegories Abandon the Blueprint on Ethereal Dream Pop Single “Glorious Vanity,” New Album ‘By Accident, On Purpose’ Out Now

Experimental duo Allegories release their long-awaited new album, By Accident, On Purpose, alongside the focus track “Glorious Vanity.” Moving restlessly through electronic, indie rock, dream pop, shoegaze, and more abstract terrain, the record is the result of a creative experiment that began with a seemingly simple set of rules: write every song on ukulele, make the ukulele disappear, and rebuild what remained using electronic instrumentation.

In theory, the restrictions were meant to simplify Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell’s process. Instead, they opened up an almost overwhelming number of possibilities, sending the duo down a winding creative road that began in 2021 and only reached its conclusion in the summer of 2026.

“In theory, it seemed like a way to simplify our process,” the duo shares. “In reality, it opened up a million possibilities and often made the original song almost irrelevant.”

That tension between limitation and possibility became the engine behind the album. Allegories have long used self-imposed parameters to disrupt familiar habits and force themselves toward ideas they might otherwise overlook. Here, Jordan gradually buried the original ukulele compositions beneath eclectic new arrangements before Adam wrote additional vocals and melodies overtop, with the competing versions ultimately fused together.

Some of those original songs remain clearly present. Others barely survived. Focus track “Glorious Vanity” is the most extreme example: only its title remains from the initial composition, as the duo followed the song into the most ethereal space found anywhere on By Accident, On Purpose.

Dreamy and immersive, “Glorious Vanity” captures the willingness to abandon a predetermined destination that came to define the record. Rather than protecting the original idea, Allegories allowed instinct and experimentation to dictate what the song needed to become, creating a particularly weightless entry point into an album shaped by discovery.

The process also produced an unexpected sonic turn. Despite initially planning to rebuild the songs electronically, increasingly organic elements found their way back into the music. Guitars, largely absent from 2022’s Endless, returned alongside live drums and bass. Shoegaze textures surfaced, while traces of Jordan and Adam’s decade spent together in indie rock band The Rest began bleeding through the electronic experimentation.

The resulting record sits somewhere between those histories. Indie-electronic production collides with dream pop atmosphere, indie rock instrumentation, fractured arrangements, and flashes of pop immediacy. Familiar structures appear before veering somewhere less predictable, allowing the duo’s electronic and rock instincts to coexist without either becoming the dominant language.