EP Review: Keeley Forsyth - Photograph

It’s simple to assign adjectives to Keeley Forsyth’s sound. It’s stark, gothic, minimal, and ghostlike. But, anyone who gave this year’s debut album Debris more than one listen knows that those words are inadequate. It is all of those things, sure, but there’s a deeper weight to the combination of voice, guitar, and synthesizer. Forsyth’s vocal is the most memorable of all the elements, usually morphing into not only different deliveries and intonations, but entirely new personas and egos. The music holds her up gently and simply, which made Debris one of the finest, albeit understated, debuts of 2020.

Sadly, the new Photograph EP doesn’t have the same elegant dance between music and voice. At four tracks, however, this isn’t a huge problem. Like Debris, it’s bookended with its best songs. The opening title track is a slow-motion reveal of style that newcomers may need. “Our words are the weight of bricks / I couldn’t find you in my arms,” croons a languid Forsyth. Closing out “Photograph” is a four-note twinkle of a melody that only lasts a couple of phrases. It’s in this way you realize how Forsyth effectively withholds melodies; all the pieces are there for her songs to spread out and expand, but this tantric method works incredibly well to the opposite effect.

Second track “Unravelling” doesn’t quite share this quality though, as it sees Forsyth withholding melody to an extreme. Fortunately, the poetry remains impeccable: “My mind is my belly button / thick unravelling to a better place / find a better place.” Whether this is Forsyth herself or another persona, it works. Next is “Glass”, where Forsyth opts for spoken-word delivery. Nick Cave comparisons abound, particularly his “Fireflies” interlude on last year’s Ghosteen, but Forsyth’s voice is so damn good, you’d rather she just sung it. Perhaps if there was a full-length list of tracks to back it up, it’d feel better placed.

Before any disappointment sets in, “Stab” clears the air with the most inventive sonics of the whole EP. Small snare drums literally ‘stab’ into the song’s otherwise astral aesthetic. “Don’t fall into the trap / it’s going to stop / regain control,” warns Forsyth’s lowest register. Close your eyes and the effect is as frightening as it is cinematic (a certain stabbing scene from Ex-Machina would pair perfectly).

The world over knows how difficult it is to follow-up a truly brilliant debut, but Forsyth manages to convey her style well with this short collection. The immediacy (“Start Again”) and mourning (“Look to Yourself”) from the album may be absent, but if you placed Photograph‘s four tracks somewhere into the tracklist, Debris’ relative brevity could blossom out into something greater. However, it’s quite possible that Forsyth wants to keep things as brief as she can; it’s an effective musical method to save us from a 2020 that’s been saturated in too much information, maximalist overreporting, and anxiety. Look to Photograph if you need a release from all this.

Album Review: Mourn - Self Worth

Let’s get this fact out of the way right now: the four members of Mourn were just teenagers when they released their first album in 2014, and their youth has far too often been the only thing people talk about when they talk about them. Instead, let’s focus instead on just how reliable the Barcelona punks are; their consistent release schedule always churns out at least a few gems. The follow to their self-titled debut, 2016’s Ha, Ha, He., showcased a darker sound, and 2018’s Sorpresa Familia was a sprightly jump in fidelity. The newest, Self Worth, is again both of those things. Adding a heavy dose of righteous anger to the narratives, these cuts are the lean and mean adrenaline shots we’ve come to expect, or rather, need, from this band.

The ingredients are much the same, spearheaded by Jazz Rodríguez Bueno and Carla Pérez Vas’ singing – often howling with every inch of their vocal chords. But special mention goes to new member Víctor Pelusa, whose drums are punchy and almost never quit. A standout is “It’s A Frog’s World”, where the band make you think it’ll be their only percussion-less entry on the album, but more than halfway in, the pretty harmonies are accosted once again by a roaring performance from the drummer.

This is one of several reminders that Mourn are a band focused on energy, but it’s important to note that it comes with a very polished sound. Classic New York punks might look the other way, but fans of the fidelity of bands like Metz have a lot to love here. Even the songs with more soothing guitar riffs put out a heck of a lot of decibels. “The Tree” is a new tonal direction for the band, with reverb that almost makes this a hangout song and lyrics that emphasize metaphor over specificity. Closer “The Family’s Broke” is a sibling track with an almost shoegaze warmth on top, and it’s a fine lyrical departure as well, describing the dismantling of the Sorpresa Familia (“surprise family”) that was built up on their previous LP.

Still, the first dose we got from Self Worth remains its finest track; lead single “Call You Back” – first released back in April – is effortlessly good. Clearly borrowing once again from bands like Throwing Muses and Sleater-Kinney, each vocal part is practically screamed, whether it’s a solo melody or a sublime harmonization. “I’d rather die before letting you know how I feel” is the resounding lyric, evoking catharsis and desperation in almost equal measure. It’s just a catchy tune, right up to the end where the drummer strikes some off-kilter snare hits and the vocals are reduced to wordless chants at this point, as if they’re telling the listener “we’ve said all we need to say.”

Indignation is queen of Self Worth’s narrative. Rodríguez Bueno and Pérez Vas often sing about the release from toxic relationships. “They think they do things for me / But they’re doing them to me,” they scream on “Men”, but, this is more than a breakup album. Indeed, Mourn introduced the themes of the album by saying:“You try so hard to do life your own way, but you’re super stressed out and you’re scared, and every now and then you think “Is it worth it?” In the end, I think it’s worth it.” Yes, stress does permeate the attitude of the record, but it’s always expressed in a healthy, satisfying way.

Like many records in this scrappy rock genre, there’s not too much to say before you start unnecessarily over analysing it. In short: it’s the best sounding Mourn record by a longshot, while maintaining the youthful energy we expect and need from the Barcelona band. Self Worth may not be the most well-rounded punk album of 2020, but it still manages to be hyper-focused in sound, expression, and energy. If there are angry demons that need to be exorcised from a clouded mind, Mourn can help.

Album Review: Deradoorian - Find The Sun

Many of us are spending extensive amounts of time in self-exploration, and Find The Sun is an album borne of just that. For her second long-player, Angel Deradoorian has much to tell us about this process. Turns out there’s at least as much to unlearn as there is to learn: “There was nothing out there / nothing in here / and nothing is here to stay,” she sings on “It Was Me”, explaining about her journey inward, teaching us that we will always be reckoning with ourselves even if some force of nature destroys society; or some force of will rebuilds it. After all, the album was long finished by the time Covid became a global anxiety.

As a concept, this is a beautiful impetus for a piece of art, and Deradoorian tackles introspection with grace. Bookended by its best songs “Red Den” and “Sun”, Find The Sun is a time capsule into the half-dozen or so genres that have inspired her most. As stated in the press release, psychedelic heroes Can and Pharaoh Sanders were huge influences; “Saturnine Night”, “It Was Me”, and “The Illuminator” tackle these styles to an almost simulatory degree. Even the production has an early-70s fidelity to it, made ever-more apparent with headphones. Deradoorian recommends giving it a listen while lying on the floor, and such an experience would certainly drive home Find The Sun’s meditative qualities.

The reasons behind the record and how the lyrics enforce it are often more interesting than the album experience itself. This isn’t to say that it’s a musical failure – the contrary is often true since Find The Sun never fails to be compositionally bold. Opening track “Red Den” has an exquisite, in-the-room-with-the-band feel to it, and when she sings the album’s first lines, it’s a whisper. We journey to her native Armenia, temples in China, and, most importantly, India. Yes, the track and the album at large clearly reflect an Eastern journey through solitude, and “Red Den” sets it all up perfectly.

Although it shares a recording quality with the other songs, Deradoorian often chooses instrumentals that sprawl to extremes far flung from “Red Den”’s gauzy claustrophobia. “Saturnine Night” propels itself into ecstasy over seven minutes; ever the backbone, Samer Ghadry’s drumming persists and persists, never stopping for a break, hook, or even a coda. Deradoorian is left to sing for her life: “Give me infinite skies! I die! I die!” she intones breathily – the crescendo and drama are well-earned.

Find The Sun goes on to find Deradoorian’s voice more than anything. The hyper-focused, high fidelity of her work with Dirty Projectors is so far in the rear view it almost feels trite to mention. What’s found here is much more subdued. Almost underselling her talent, the vocals on “Monk’s Robes” are lost in a swirl of rapid piano arpeggios before a chime signals an effective gong bath of a coda. The resulting feeling is a peaceful one.

The chameleonic, guitar-leaning multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington rounds out the band, and things get tricky when you try to find out which member of the trio played what and when. Ghadry has the drums covered, mostly, but Deradoorian and Harrington share talents to the point where many parts could have been played by either. Sure, this concrete information can be found somewhere, but it’s more fun to imagine the sounds coming from some unnamed musical force. The litany of treble instruments on “Monk’s Robes” follow this mystery, the video featuring a ghost-like Deradoorian strumming a stringed instrument. Look closely and you’ll see that her fingers don’t move with the chord progression; the strum is merely for show. Even in a visual medium, the album continues mysteriously without a real conclusion.

This isn’t a bad thing. It’s also kind of the point. “Find the Sun is a record to sit and listen to, and ask yourself about your Self,” Deradoorian says. However, a hook or two across these songs would be welcome – but considering adding some is a frustrating conundrum given Find The Sun’s themes. Yeah, there’s not much dynamic pull to these songs, but we’d probably have to rethink the album from the ground up if there were. Asking for more excitability may be a misguided request.

Either way, most artists who borrow so generously from other genres don’t nail it this well. Deradoorian’s impersonations of classic psychedelia and krautrock are solid, except perhaps “The Illuminator”. A blatant free-jazz homage, this track is nine minutes of spoken word delivery, flute improvisation, and repetitive drumming. Although one of the weaker performances, the poetry remains well in-line with the album’s mission statement. “Devil’s Market” has the same trappings; the flute, although well performed and produced, is the only moving part of the track while the narrative, once again, remains the most compelling component. Deradoorian views her temptations one by one, and by sticking to her mantra of “say no, say no, say no,” she continues to clue us in on what successful self-evaluation looks like. If the performances used some of the dramatic build from elsewhere on the record, it’d be much less dull.

There’s little else to complain about. The narrative is crystal clear, with poetry often perfectly matching the tone and feeling of the production. Find The Sun could easily be the soundtrack to one’s own meditative experience, but this is a personal record, and hearing about Deradoorian’s individual experience is its finest quality. Closer “Sun” is a wonderfully-paced example of this, only climaxing in its final moments before several drums and voices shout the album’s title. We’ve come a long way since the foreboding “Red Den”.

Writing fun songs is not easy, but fitting them into a mythos is even harder. Deradoorian and company handle the latter perfectly. It’s less playful and more focused than her last full-length, 2015’s The Expanding Flower Planet, and the concept record suits her well. Any indie artist should start taking notes on how to construct such a complete statement. The rest of us now have a guidebook for an effective personal journey right when we need it most.

Album Review: Protomartyr - Ultimate Success Today

Protomartyr frontman Joe Casey must read quite a lot. On the band’s 2014 track “Maidenhead” he retold a dark tale from a 1941 novel by British author and playwright Patrick Hamilton called Hangover Square. The book’s narrative follows a crippling alcoholic with an identity disorder whose problems escalate when his dissociative states – or “dead moods” – become violent. As a nice cherry on top, Hamilton works in themes of fascism, class, and pre-war England. It wasn’t just the characters suffering, it was an entire society. Sound familiar?

It’s not dissimilar from Casey’s take on the tale. Protomartyr’s “Maidenhead” represents a release from the dregs of the underclass, but the hope provided turns out to be false. Class and greed also underscore Casey’s prose throughout the band’s discography, bubbling just between the surface of angry guitars and odd rhythms. There are few modern bands that depict social instability amidst art as well as Protomartyr.

After signing to Domino, releasing their impactful 2017 album Relatives In Descent and re-issuing their debut All Passion No Technique, the band had some looking back to do. A new LP is always a daunting venture, and the ill feelings Casey had during the writing process almost turned against him. “This panic was freeing in a way. It allowed me to see our fifth album as a possible valediction of some confusingly loud five-act play,” said Casey about the writing of Ultimate Success Today. Although panic and socioeconomic struggle are still ever-present in Protomartyr’s music, this album proves to be their most concise yet.

Lead single “Processed By The Boys” is a fantastic return. Soaked in propulsion and dread, the song imagines a handful of apocalyptic scenarios. “When the ending comes, is it gonna run at us like a wild-eyed animal?” Casey questions at the outset. There’s so much macabre quality to the lyric, it kind of sticks out in the band’s catalogue, which is saying something. It’s worth watching the video accompaniment with its bizarre humor and tackiness: a small crowd enjoys a karaoke version of the song while trying to ignore a petty fight going on in the same room. Casey’s hilariously-cast doppelgänger is professional and unfazed despite the violence going on in his crowd.

While the fight itself is a rather simple take on a Brazilian meme video that the band became infatuated with while writing, there’s poetry under the surface. The show goes on, but people can’t help but be distracted by the fight happening just a few feet away. This is the same way that, throughout the record, Protomartyr discuss the state of the world without beating the listener over the head with the themes – indeed, the pounding ache we all feel is easily tackled by the instrumentals alone.

So yeah, Protomartyr are a politically-charged punk band, but damn did guitarist Greg Ahee ever nail it with this record. Opener “Day Without End” has an incredible build to it; where previous album openers gave the listener a nice release in the chorus, this track has no intention of being so accommodating. We’re held over the edge of a cliff as Ahee’s tones become more and more lamenting and loud, while free jazz saxophones round things out perfectly, like a swirling collection of neurons trying to operate under extreme duress and anxiety. Keeping with its title, “Day Without End” doesn’t end so much as suddenly stop.

Another Ahee highlight is “June 21”, where his guitar takes a reprieve from its usual distorted cries to work in more of an angular early-80s punk aesthetic. Half Waif mainbrain Nandi Rose kicks off the vocals and does a fabulous impression of Casey’s cadence, before he retakes the helm. The riffs are disorienting and awkward, perfectly matching his mumbling gait as he tells a bleaker summertime story than a breakup album. “Don’t go to the BP after dark,” he bemoans about a lonely corner of Detroit where even his enemies aren’t keeping him company.

“Michigan Hammers” opens up the second half of Ultimate Success Today with gusto, and it’s perhaps the finest showcase of the band’s rhythm section to date. Scott Davidson’s basslines are bleating and cruel, never warning the listener before climbing up the neck to Carlos D levels of treble, while Alex Leonard on drums smartly lets Ahee and the horn section hold the foreground of the song. “What’s been torn down can be rebuilt / What has been rebuilt can be destroyed,” Casey cries from the end of the bar (after observing that only some of the other drinkers are on pills). The choppy editing of explosions, police brutality, corporate success, and a hammer crashing through glass in the video are another no-frills addition to the narrative.

“Tranquilizer” and “Modern Business Hymns” are exhaustingly aggressive at this juncture, but there’s more poignant prose to hold things together: “Eating dirt and growth from built-up respirators / While the rich sup on zebra mussels broiled in plankton.” We’ve heard Casey take much-needed digs at the super-wealthy dozens of times before, but this is 2020 and the band will express anger where it’s due.

Protomartyr bed down the tensions incredibly well with closing track “Worm In Heaven” – but gosh is it ever a drag to get through. Like revisiting his feelings around All Passion No Technique, Casey seems well aware that any moment could be the band’s last, and takes the opportunity to say goodbye. Although the song is mired in a retrospective of a frightened existence, he has bittersweet things to say to those he’ll leave behind: “Be as needed as the nail / As neat as the pin… I wish you well, I do.” This farewell works best on a thematic level, and solidifies his idea of Ultimate Success Today being akin to the denouement of a five-act play.

Ultimate Success Today is the closest the band have come to a perfect front-to-back experience. Even if your ears may feel they need a break from the towering walls of instrumentation, the lyrics and style will keep you coming back; spend some time with the lyric sheet and you’ll continue to ponder and explore the literature that inspired Casey. Almost any song here would fit well with Brothers Karamazov  (Dostoevsky’s Dmitri fits many of Casey’s depictions to a tee) or 1984 as a companion. Also, given that they’re natives to Detroit, there is a sense that the band feel a duty to talk about how recent years have affected their community. It’s a cautionary tale we can all learn from.

On Ultimate Success Today, Protomartyr have made essential jams for a genre that’s been passed around dozens of times over. It’s nice to know that, five albums deep, the band haven’t lost any ferocity, and that they continue to be a mouthpiece for so many feelings we all share.

Album Review: LA Priest - GENE

No one is more tired of hearing this tale than Sam Eastgate, but damn, Fantasy Black Channel was one hell of a record. Eastgate’s now defunct Late of the Pier took elements from dance punk and concocted an ecstatic mixture of his mind’s inner-workings. After its release in 2008, we couldn’t wait to see what the band were going to throw at us next.

Eastgate’s LA Priest project is so far removed from this level of bombast, it’s difficult to remember that it’s the same person. We were all disappointed when that second Late of the Pier album never came, but after his 2015 debut as LA Priest, Inji, all was forgiven.

Eastgate was eager to mature his sound, and we were all willing to wait for it. Sadly, GENE fails to set the hook beyond its general concepts. Save for a couple of stinkers, the songs on the album are fine. There’s patient care to each soundscape; Eastgate even created his own instrument, the titular GENE, to compose the album.

Staying in a consistent groove for the length of “Beginning” is a testament to Eastgate’s growth as a songwriter. It’s an excellent way to open the album, like you’ve stepped outside your house for the first time in the day to realize there’s a Mary Poppins whimsicality to the world. Instead of singing penguins and birds however, there’s a host of razor-tight guitar chords and staccato arpeggios underneath a buoyant vocal line. The stage seems set for an expansion on the unpredictability of Fantasy Black Channel and Inji.

Next is “Rubber Sky” which also never strays from its base elements; there’s a distinct shift in the sound coming from the GENE in the track’s second half, but the pulse on the drums remains stubbornly in place. By the third track, we should be stepping away from these tired ‘boom-clap’ drum forms, and what we get is “What Moves”, which is one of Eastgate’s most fun vocal melodies ever; trace any part of your body to its arrangement and you’ll certainly end up in a pleasant dance. It’s a great song, but it doesn’t sequence well with what comes before.

At this point GENE is gasping for more pep and variety; instead we get “Peace Lily” which is more of a coda to “What Moves” than a complete song. There’s a Bibio-inspired lilt to the guitar which is quite pleasant when taken by itself; taken within context of the record, however, it feels like an afterthought. The following “Open My Eyes” has an enchanting melody and there’s nothing to complain about on its own, but at this point, five tracks in, GENE hasn’t made a single dynamic shift.

“Sudden Thing”, “Monochrome”, and “Black Smoke” also do little to bring lift-off to this project, but each boasts an excellent finale. “Sudden Thing” ends with a moment of relative silence, with legato strums and minimalist drums, which would be soothing if it were on a different album. The other two songs both have a very energetic ending to them, but the decision to place the fabulous drum break at the end of “Black Smoke” instead of the beginning is beyond this writer. It almost feels like Eastgate is purposefully hiding GENE’s more engaging elements deep within its tracks; the blueprints are laid out, but the construction has no flash.

After multiple listens, the frustration begins piling on. Perhaps a new level of collaboration would have given LA Priest the adrenaline shot it needs. Longtime producer and Phantasy Records mainbrain Erol Alkan once again worked with Eastgate on the album, and their chemistry on individual songs is clear, but when challenged with creating an album experience, maturation has given way to lethargy. Even the poetry is flat – trading the immediacy of Eastgate’s ruminations on suicide and sex and replacing them with lyrics that are greyly unspecific. The fact that “Kissing of the Weeds” exists at all is a goof, and the milquetoast lyrics aren’t helping.

Despite the utter boredom of GENE, Eastgate is no stranger to a hook or a pleasant song, but what made Inji and Late of the Pier work so well was his ability to mix those skills with songs that were genuinely fun to hear. Conversely, getting through GENE is a total chore. We end with “Ain’t No Love Affair”, which closes the album experience on two minutes of trippy ambience and arrhythmia. This kind of winding down would be more welcome at the end of an exciting journey, and it ends up being yet another song that might have prospered in a different context.

None of this is evidence that Eastgate is over the hill or talentless. To the contrary, the ability to restrain your songs from blasting off into a massive synth solo is difficult to do when you have an instrument as crafty as the GENE, which has effectively created its own genre. Eastgate’s steadfastness is praiseworthy, but it hardly makes for an engaging album experience. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another five years to hear this sound get the expansion it deserves.