“Take the Pain” by Fine China

Last year’s I Felt Called wasn’t just one of my favorite albums of 2025. It’s also Fine China’s most ambitious album to date, taking their Smiths and New Order-influenced melodies and expanding them with haunting ambience that’s equal parts Hearts of Space, Windham Hill, and Talk Talk. But even at an hour in length, it turns out that I Felt Called still wasn’t quite complete.

Last week, Fine China and Velvet Blue Music released I Felt Called — The Complete Sessions, which, as its title suggests, features several outtakes and alternate versions that didn’t make it onto the original album. The five new songs are very much of a piece with their predecessors, and at times, lean even more heavily into the atmospherics. “Don’t Fight the Magic,” for example, is all mood and texture thanks to somber keys and coruscating guitars.

If I had to pick a favorite song from this new batch, though, it’d be closing number “Take the Pain,” which drifts by cool as an ocean breeze thanks to airy guitar melodies and shimmering synths. Like all of Fine China’s best songs, it’s a lush pop tune that can cut you to the quick with introspection. Here, Rob Withem seems to interrogate his own melancholy tendencies. “We never take the sunlight/We only take the pain/Why not try?/Find a place where we delight under sky,” he sings, his breathy voice imbuing the lyrics with a yearning quality.