Trey Gruber's posthumous debut double LP Herculean House of Cards. A compilation of early demos, studio demos, and live recordings.

A tortured songwriter and struggling addict who jolted the tired Chicago DIY scene with his own brand of primal despair, Trey Gruber and his band Parent were on track to join the ranks of Twin Peaks, Mild High Club, and Whitney.

His death in 2017 at the age of 26 brought it all to a halt. In his final years Trey wrote and recorded hundreds of previously unheard demos, dandelions in the cracked concrete of 21st century disconnect, an alphabet's worth of which have been compiled by his family and friends for his only album: Herculean House Of Cards.

The 26-song 2xLP covers years of material, from home tape recordings, sessions at Mathew Roberts (Mild High Club) & Paul Cherry's home studio, to a studio session with Charles Glanders (Whitney) at Chicago's Foxhall Studios, along with audio taken at The Hideout during his last live performance, among others.

Though Gruber was an unrelenting perfectionist who was constantly self-deprecating about his best demos, Herculean House of Cards is a wholly comprehensive and accurate reflection of his infectious charisma and raw songwriting.

He had a charmingly distinct way with words but also could be disarmingly vulnerable. Like he was in life, Gruber never shied away from being open with his struggles with alcoholism and addiction.

On the vivid opener "Eisenhower to the West Side," he sings in painstaking detail of, "A jail-skin cell, a junkies fight/Corner-boys full of grace/And Jesus Christ full of spite." He told then-future bandmate flautist Rebecca Ridge, "It's not some Lou Reed glorification of drugs _ `makes me feel like a man'_ I talk about the disconnect and the ugliness.

They're sad pop songs." But even with the pain and the darkness in his lyrics, Gruber's songs had an unmistakable sense of hope and catharsis.