Two Broody Albums From IDLES and St. Vincent | SOTW 05/31/2024
Doing a lot with weirdo freaks this week… a cabal of peculiar fellows brewing and such. Unfortunately, this particular peculiar fellow is living through pollen-induced natural selection at the time of writing this, so if you want my feeble genes to remain a part of the pool, your patience reading through this week’s clunkiness would be appreciated. Not sure why you would want to curse the next generation with my sinuses… if you were a eugenicist. Gotcha. Lotta bloat like this going forward, though, so be warned.
LA DANSE DES MÉDUSES | Dominique Guiot So, off topic right off the bat—my girlfriend and I have been following the adorable Frog & Dog for a while, but I only recently just noticed cartoonist Niall Breen has great music taste. I mean, a Kate Bush shoutout alone is enough to get my attention, but between the occasional Big Thief and Michael Cera and the frequent Yoko Kanno and Ryuichi Sakamoto (see my Co-Pilot review), I think I’d consider this dude sufficiently esoteric. Even so, “La Danse Des Méduses” is the last sound I’d expect attached to these two unambiguous cutie guys:
Aside from absolutely confirming the low-key off-kilter undercurrent beneath these two, Dominique Guiot’s experimental instrumental has also been my May soundtrack—just alien enough to be absurd, but not alien enough to lose its groove. From Guiot’s most famous (and wonderfully named) album L’Universe De La Mer, in some sense, “La Danse des Méduses” can’t be too alien, for it draws inspiration from only the most alien of us earthlings—the deep-sea ecosystems of the abyssal plains. In this underwater world rendered in prog electronica, Minimoogs become the Christmas bioluminescence flashing on comb jellies; loose guitar becomes the crystalline grin of a dragonfish; the mellotron’s fuzzy sample becomes a Hitchcock film reel thrown overboard, still sinking from the ‘50s. Also, the clavinet. I didn’t really know what to do with a clavinet, but what a name, right? Like their companion instruments, each exotic creature at these depths is not inherently alien—they simply stem from familiar ancestors warped by environmental extremes, in some cases beyond the threshold for human connection. If I locked eyes with a gangly anglerfish lurching through the deep, I would feel confronted by something beyond myself, as if we weren’t both vertebrates more closely related than 95% of animal life—as if we both didn’t have hearts knocking away at our ribs. Listening to “La Danse des Méduses” is a similar sensation, though perhaps closer to a spider scurrying far too close in an instant—these instruments scuttle and squelch in an ominous key that makes for a shocking pairing with The Cure’s “The Top,” though their quirkiness is inherently harmless.
Granted, much like the adjacent work of Ryuichi Sakamoto, I can probably assume benevolence as a present-day listener because Guiot’s style is so rooted in the past. These instruments and recording tools, though sci-fi staples of their time, are almost more reminiscent of plain, old 1978 nowadays. L’Universe De La Mer even sports surrealist cover art by renowned sci-fi illustrator Jacques Wyrs that’d feel right at home on a mass-market paperback from an even earlier era. Like many other works of its time, “La Danse des Méduses” and its fellow tracks represent a sort of decay into familiarity—a mortality most unearthly media must contend with when constrained by fundamentally earthly technology. Some may deride these figments as dated after becoming so thoroughly known, but to me, I think there’s something incredibly endearing about it. “Familiar alien” may be an oxymoron that no longer evokes the unknown, but having been captured by this song some forty-five years later, I’m living proof that none of its kooky charm has been lost. Much like looking an angler in the eye, I think it’s pretty neat to recognize human warmth in something so seemingly isolated. Maybe that’s just overthinking things, though. Do you think Frog or Dog have any thoughts in their weirdo heads? Zero. You and I should hope for the same.
Pairs Well With: “A Shot in the Dark” (John Zorn), “Coc’n Rolla” (Begnagrad), “The Top” (The Cure)
BIG TIME NOTHING | St. Vincent For probably over a decade, I’ve been hoping for St. Vincent to let loose on a metal-adjacent album in the image of her insane one-off “Krokodil,” and after her single “Broken Man” had hardcore guitar and Dave Grohl on drums, it seemed like we were finally getting one. Save for certain self immolation similarities (Free Palestine), I’m still stoked about All Born Screaming a month after its release—even if it’s nothing like the heavy rock album that was advertised. Luckily, I happen to be a huge fan of the moody-broody synth that we got instead—a surprising match with IDLES’s similarly toned-down TANGK (and the similarities don’t end there).
To be fair, Annie Clark herself never alleged that All Born Screaming would be the Tool-inspired album she’s entertained making in numerous interviews—in her own terms, this album is “post-plague pop,” which sounds pretentious until a full listen confirms that this is actually the perfect descriptor. All Born Screaming really does progress like a pandemic: its first few tracks churn forebodingly, the next three burn anarchically until nothing but weary fear remains, and once the cynicism subsides, the last three songs exude some healing, albeit inexorably warped. A lot of albums tell a cohesive story—many more skillfully than this one (though that’s not a burn)—yet for me, All Born Screaming’s qualities smooth into a homogenous goo of quality equilibrium where no one song stands out, which I think means it’s a great album, right? Even after four full listens, I can’t pick any favorites beyond “Broken Man”—no matter which song I could’ve chosen to write about today, I’d have regretted not choosing another. I have something to say about almost every track, but none of them amount to enough for a full-on essay (which is regrettably the Songs of the Week Standard in 2024)—you’ll just have to wait and see if this makes Albums of the Year in December for a full review. Since I only have time for one song today, I’ll say I could’ve chosen to compare the opening “Hell is Near” with TANGK’s extremely similar prologue “IDEA 01,” reveled in the calamatous, De Staat-esque doom-synth of “Reckless,” pointed out how uncomfortably close “The Power’s Out” is to Bowie’s “Five Years,” or talk about the late SOPHIE’s impact on the alienness of “Sweetest Fruit,” but I somehow went with a song I have the least to say about because I think it’s a far better representative of The Vibes than any other track.
“Big Time Nothing” falls at the end of the album’s anarchy party—most of the anger has burnt away but the cynical core hasn’t yet cooled to despair. Coasting on the fumes of a rager, Clark’s vocals trudge numbly against a clubby beat. Fittingly, I’ve seen several comparisons between this song’s verses and U2’s underrated “Numb,” but unlike Zooropa’s sleepy atmosphere, “Big Time Nothing” stomps along headstrong, as though Clark’s reluctant vocals are being stubbornly dragged by the instrumentation, donkey-like. I wouldn’t argue that her end-times ennui is in any way unique—her “1, 2 / 1, 2, [piercing feedback]” is almost too close to Kyle Gordon’s “1, 2, / 1, 2, I-don’t-care” in his emo parody “My Life (Is The Worst Life Ever)”—but clichéd or not, she does it really damn well, especially because of that instrumental contrast. My St. Vincent superfan sister (whose extensive All Born Screaming thoughts you can read here) has said numerous times that this album is basically what Masseduction should’ve been, and “Big Time Nothing” captures this sound exactly—even without the backdrop of impending societal collapse, Masseduction’s poppy, shiny critique of celebrity culture could have been so much cooler with “Big Time Nothing’s” biting contrast while still being what the kids call a bop. There’s even traces of the all-too-short breakdown at the end of “Daddy’s Home,” from Clark’s last album—while that song sounds far sleazier, the greasy guitars are repurposed here to such great effect.
While I’m not sure it’s my overall favorite song from All Born Screaming (though definitely in the top 5), I’d say this is a far more accurate sample of its sound than “Broken Man”—and perhaps a more faithful manifestation of St. Vincent’s sound, for that matter. That’s one thing I appreciate about all of All Born Screaming—much as I’ve enjoyed her gimmicks of reinvention for the past three or four albums, this character has far more sensibilities that are unabashedly Annie Clark, with no labels necessary. That said, this revolving door of identities does have me asking: what’s next for St. Vincent? If you want my two cents, I think the fact that this wasn’t her hardcore album means that she should double down next time and go full industrial. I’m talking, like, Skinny Puppy shrieking in a full cyborg getup—you know, to scare off all of her new Masseduction fans. Let’s make it happen.
Pairs Well With: “Daddy’s Home” (St. Vincent), “Lucinda” (A Certain Ratio) [Reviewed 11/17/2023], “Numb” (U2)
POP POP POP | IDLES So, I learned what “freude” means not from “freudenfreude” but “schadenfreude,” which is kind of the opposite way that should happen, right?
If seeping into my All Born Screaming thoughts wasn’t enough of a tipoff, the TANGK hype has held up five listens and a live show later. Last time we talked TANGK, I was loving IDLES’s skew from their beat-‘em-up punk aggression to a moodier, broodier sound, probably in no small part thanks to producer Nigel Godrich of Radiohead fame. Though I could’ve followed up reviewing their ruminating mantra “Grace” with one of the album’s straight-up punk smackdowns (see “Dancer” or “Gift Horse,” both very much worth talking about), I couldn’t ignore another hazy slow-burner—especially since it answers some questions “Grace” raised. As much as IDLES is known for their rage, they’ve lately been lyrical warriors for optimism, championing Joy as an Act of Resistance (especially after releasing an album of the same name). The reception has been mixed.
While angry-happy makes perfect sense as a rebellious pairing, the sizzling angst through much of TANGK felt, to me, harder to reconcile with positivity punk, at least as I perceived it. “POP POP POP,” easily the album’s most successful experimentation, is also probably the best example of this dichotomy—its rending guitar and rusty, roiling beat reek of Dust Brothers and David Fincher at their grimiest peak, though neither were exactly radiating positivity then. Even frontman Joe Talbot’s normal gusto is extinguished here in favor of a droll, ragged delivery. It’s not depressing in the slightest, no doubt—the stewing happening here is still a fun sort of dark, but in the same way Massive Attack’s “Angel” can be both awesome and ominous. It’s almost a surprise, then, to learn that Talbot’s proclamation of “Freudenfreude / joy oh joy” literally means “finding joy in other’s joy” in German—what’s up with that?
While Talbot’s delivery may not make sense (yet), one perk is that it makes IDLES’s lyrics immediately obvious. Poetry isn’t exactly a common association with punk, but there’s no other words for some of these lines that shine here. One of my favorites is “Heat seeker of a missile smile / Don't let pricks take your inch to a mile”—the consonance is so fluid until the sharpness of “pricks take,” but beyond sound-play, it’s such an interesting image of turning a smile so sour. Speaking of sour smiles, further lines like “Docile prophet puts a tune to my smile / Send it up / Like smoke to the sky” elucidate why happiness can coexist with such gritted teeth—after all, one can’t always be happy even while preaching happiness. I can’t speak for the rest of the band, but having lost his mother to alcoholism and recently suffered through a divorce, Talbot, for one, has been really roughin’ it lately. With that context, “POP POP POP” sounds like someone getting their head in the game, motivating listeners to avoid manipulation of their weakest moments and to preserve their belief that happiness can persevere. This all comes through clearest in the song’s awesome ending monologue over crackling guitar and low, groaning bass—it’s maybe my favorite part of the song. IDLES must have more in common with St. Vincent than I thought, because this is dead-on the same cadence as “Los Ageless’s” similar outro, albeit skewed darker—then again, not as dark as the also-similar outro on Chelsea Wolfe’s “Spun” (it’s a spectrum. This is some quality playlist material, people. You should be paying me for this). I don’t think I can end a review better than IDLES can end a song, and I love when an album has lyrical or musical motifs, so I’ll just leave you with the final words of “POP POP POP:”
“Cathedral of trees over dilated eyes
A sea of screams under mackerel skies
Imposter, imposter, living in my head
Am I the spider in your bed?
A dead canary and a thief for a king
A cheerleader valiant
But I will sing about love, loveLove is the thing”
Pairs Well With: “Los Ageless” (St. Vincent), “Angel” (Massive Attack), “Can’t Cool Me Down” (Car Seat Headrest)
BURNING AIRLINES GIVE YOU SO MUCH MORE | Brian Eno Between Bowie and Gabriel, Brian Eno’s been on the brain lately, so I’ll let him out of my unconscious for a bit (still leashed to a post, of course. We wouldn’t want him running away). Where better to start than his second solo album, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)? With his first and more famous solo album, Here Come the Warm Jets, that’s where. That’s right, I’ve got jokes today. It’s because I’m stalling writing. Really, though, as applauded as Warm Jets is, I couldn’t resist covering this Hunky Dory lookin’-ass album, no doubt cobbled together by artist Peter Schmidt from used Art Parts finds. While I’d love for this cover to truly be a reference (1971’s Hunky Dory is just too close to 1974’s Tiger Mountain), I don’t need to grasp at straws to connect Eno to David Bowie, with whom he has been a longtime collaborator. Longtime readers (all five of you) know how much Bowie means to me, but even I can admit that he wouldn’t be half the Bowie he became without a virtuoso like Eno at his side, and a song like “Burning Airlines Give You So Much More” is perfect proof.
If titles like Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) or “Burning Airlines Give You So Much More” weren’t already a tipoff, Brian Eno’s not one for, uh, making sense—and I’m all for it. A step further than Robyn Hitchcock surrealismo, Eno’s seeming nonsense comes from his focus on guitar—even on his solo projects, the man is humbly uncomfortable with his vocals, which he doesn’t want to distract from where his real passion was sunk. Thus, much of the lyrics of “Burning Airlines” (and other pieces) were written using Eno and the aforementioned Schmidt’s famous Oblique Strategies game—cards containing advice that, when shuffled, is often deliberately contradictory in order to stimulate creativity. While this explains some of the song’s more unconventional word pairings, its meaning still eludes many, with very confident internet interpretations ranging from the “it’s about drugs” copout (China setting = opium), to transcendental meditation (China setting = Orientalism), to Queen Elizabeth II’s trip to Hong Kong (Regina antagonist = the Queen), to even a loose retelling of Turkish Airlines flight 981’s devastating crash in, you guessed it… France. I find it a much easier explanation that these lyrics, like Cocteau Twins last week, are simply sound-based. It’s a method I’ve never particularly resonated with (why not just make sounds? Why use meaning-making devices if you’re not going to add a second channel of communication?), but which I absolutely enjoy the experience of—I even practice it in my own writing here, much to the chagrin of readers futilely grasping for superficial “meaning” in their music reviews (bah). Sometimes, though, my free-associative listening can stray even more towards soundplay than the initial song—while the song’s outro repeats “left them in Japan,” I always heard it “left hand in Japan.” Yes, that’s a more evocative image. No, it’s not for sale.
If a musician is choosing lyrics based on sounds, then you usually know that the music itself is going to be a treat, and Eno’s no exception. Like most works of pop genius, “Burning Airlines” is an easy listen while still being a layered twist of past and future. With its lazy, nodding tempo reining jangly guitar, it sounds to me like Beach Boys playing post-punk—years before post-punk was doing its confusing thing. For as much as Eno avoids vocals, they really shine here, with harmonies that sound complex enough for Brian Wilson (see parts of “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” though I don’t think it’s strong enough to make the pairings section). It’s a good match for the garden of guitar here, which both ascends and descends a scale in the chorus like Mozart while still sounding easy-hazy. I’ve made a lot of strong comparisons here, but above all else, this sounds unmistakably like Eno and no one else—amazing, considering how influential he was in the world of rock. While I thought “Burning Airlines” was obscure, it seems to be a favorite track for many off of Tiger Mountain—there’s even a whole band called Burning Airlines today, which goes to show the reach Eno has attained by just being his genius self.
Pairs Well With: “Let’s Go” (The Feelies), “Cold Slope” (Wilco) “Let Forever Be” (The Chemical Brothers)
FLATLANDS | Chelsea Wolfe There are two Wolfes inside of you: one Wolfe is death metal, the other is heartrending acoustic, and both are so, so sick of this saying. Personally, I could never choose between the two—both styles bring me a kind of awesome artistry I can’t quite find in any other musician—but I will say only one Wolfe consistently makes me cry. For once, though, we have precedent for both sides of Chelsea Wolfe on this blog: while her Goth Queen persona has had the chair for quite a few reviews following her latest release, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, we also spoke about her folk work back in November with “Be All Things,” which is far closer kin with today’s pick.
“Flatlands” takes us the furthest back we’ve ventured into Wolfe’s discography on Songs of the Week, to a time when her acclaim was limited to niche circles enjoying her first and fuzziest albums, The Grime and the Glow and Apokalypsis (shiver me timbers)—both records that, while squarely goth-rock, have always exuded her origins in folk. Having been born to a country musician, Wolfe reportedly bonded with her father over folk that, to this day, still steers her musical growth, if her What’s In My Bag? episode is anything to go by. In 2012—around that same time—Wolfe released Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs, which she regards as a compilation of “orphaned songs” rather than an official third album. Unfortunately, it seems Wolfe and I have similar preconceived notions about compilation albums, because an acoustic collection is a great way to lose my superficial interest—I know I’m only hurting myself, but like, come on, that sounds like how you’d bill an album you’re embarrassed of, right? Obviously, I’ve come to my senses after disregarding Unknown Rooms for years, and that’s all thanks to “Flatlands”—a song that’s become one of my favorites of Wolfe’s to date.
There’s not much I can say for seeing Chelsea Wolfe live at the Gothic this last April, but that’s hardly her fault—I just wish I hadn’t given myself the Travis Scott experience by standing between a barrier and three plastered, gyrating goths who clearly rejected personal space as a Christian concept. Even so, ending her scratchy, metal show with this soul-sweeping acoustic while standing in a tunnel of orange light reiterates everything I love about Chelsea Wolfe with flying colors. When she’s onstage, she is not a person—she’s channeling some spectral presence. Normally, I’m near-neurotic about micromanaging which order readers listen to new music, but I’m gonna pull a wild card and say that this live performance captures the essence of “Flatlands” just as well as the recording, which tells me everything beautiful about it existed before any polish in production. Like its namesake landscape, “Flatlands” thrives on its simplicity, Wolfe’s voice and strings whispering like dry grass. Wolfe’s rumination here has what my girlfriend and I call a capital-R Romance to it—a Romance that my girlfriend, too, has helped me see in the everyday breaths of life. Rather than argue further after rejecting “money and all its friends,” Wolfe instead diverts to the song’s central yearning:
“I want open plains and scattered trees
I want flower fields and I want salty seas
I want flatlands, soft and steady breeze
Bringing scents of lined-up orchard trees
Dripping heavy with pears and dancing leaves
I want flatlands, will you go there with me?”
It’s a beautiful setup on its own, to be sure—this craving for dirt between one’s toes above anything else this modern life has to offer—but it doesn’t quite unzip me until, like “Be All Things,” a string section opens this piece into a sweeping vista of what is unknown and yet deeply known in all of us, all at once. So Wolfe sings with said yearning on her sleeve:
“When it's said in the dark
And you know it's always there
When it's dead in your heart
But your mind is unafraid
When it's said in the dark
And you know it's never coming back
When it's there in your heart
In your mind, you set it free”
Maybe it’s because I’ve already heard the song, but even those words are enough to choke me up. Still, I know rich, timbral sound of an old violin when I hear one, and the harmonies of these lamenting strings really aren’t helping me look like a man in control of his emotions. Of course, this isn’t just a religious ode to what nature and spirituality give us—there’s a desperate sadness innate in knowing that we cannot always see it amidst modernity, and to me, her music captures this beyond what even her words can describe.
Pairs Well With: “Be All Things” (Chelsea Wolfe) [Reviewed 11/03/2023], “The Key” (Kristin Hersh), “Donut Seem” (Adrianne Lenker)
DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT | Maureen Herrera Hey, speaking of used Art Parts…
I know most of my artistic snobbery comes from art museums or legendary comic illustrators, but it’s hit me recently how many non-celebrity artists exist in the background of day-to-day life, whether they be drawing the backdrops to Lego sets, the figures in instruction manuals, the corporate minimalist scenes the internet currently loathes, and of course, the locally-sourced pieces hanging for sale in restaurants. It’s these run-of-the-mill artists that are most at risk of replacement by AI, and I’d like to support them more here if I can.
Of course, with a piece like this, I didn’t want to feature it making any statement other than “holy balls, this shit rips.” Maureen Herrera’s collage, “Do You See the Light,” caught my eye in Boulder’s Walnut Café—surprising, considering that if you wanted to hide a set of technicolor babies anywhere, it would 100% be the Walnut Café. As collages go, I’m often most impressed when I can’t tell it’s a collage, which is often the effect of pieces with dozens of cutouts. While this particular collage seems to have around four components—like, that entire “alien landscape” is just enlarged human skin—it’s all used to impressive effect, particularly because I can’t fathom where Herrera found three blue babies wearing swim goggles (and shoes?). It almost reminds me of something I’d see in a Grant Morrison Doom Patrol issue—just too absurd to even understand where its origin may have been. I mean, need I say more about this? Great stuff, man.