‘Ignore Grief’ Xiu Xiu ALBUM REVIEW:
On their thirteenth studio album, experimental rock outfit Xiu Xiu epitomise the duality of
Grief. Applying the experiences and suffering of five individuals connected to the band, Ignore Grief is structurally splintered into halves: five tracks are embedded in reality, the other five are imaginary; experimentally between industrial and neo-classical; and with Angela Seo taking on the vocals on half of the track, Jamie Stewart on the other.
The base portrayal of Grief’s reality is provided instantly with the opener: “The Real
Chaos Cha Cha Cha.” It’s barrage of deluded and drone strings; light tin can and shudderingly resonant percussion; and squeaky playground-roundabout, beachball-deflating, train-whistle woodwind all partner over alarm synths and cavernous piano. Angela’s semi-intelligible vocals allow only for particular words to cut through the overwhelming instrumental wall. Trying to articulate an emotionally reserved response through the chaos of realised, unbearable Grief.
The boundaries of reality and the imagination progressively constrict more from now on.
“666 Photos of Nothing” introduces Jamie through a strangled accordion and funeral organ combination before softening to a more subtle gong-furnished instrumental stillness. Jamie wanders vocally from carelessly disturbed ‘Are you gaga for glass?’ to a more insidious distraction of thoughts amongst the instrumental calm, which soon becomes littered with glitched, harsher cuts of noise and clanky piano.
This introduction to the dynamic the album is exploring gives way to “Esquerita, Little
Richard,” not only potentially the best track on the album but one of Xiu Xiu’s best isolated offerings in years. While it has a similarly penetrative structure to it, the substance of the song – taking from the relationship between the flamboyant R&B innovator Esquerita and inspired architect of rock and roll Little Richard, a spinning inability to harness identity in sexuality as a result of suffocating social forces, hesitantly dealt with through the instrumental layering. In identifying queer suppression as a distressing implication to so many past live, the track respectfully hushes slightly. In spite of Angela’s persistent chants of “Ignore grief,” simple synth notes give way to a dejected admission of ‘What are you doing later; I can’t make my mind; Anything could happen; Strut your stuff.’ Grief manifests in a skewed, fundamentally unfair circumstance. It is gorgeously sad.
“Maybae Baeby,” the first single for the album, details a young girl finding refuge from
her abusive parents by hiding with a pet tarantula. The track crushes the softness found in Angela’s voice, as the production peels back her vocals to the suffocated foundational layer of the song. Like the child of the song’s narrative, her voice becomes hidden amongst the brutal, thundering industrial percussion, symbolising the seeking, destructive parent and heavily highlighting the differences apart from David Kendrick’s inclusion in the band. Experimentally, banshee-screams of guitar and twisted, readied leather add further to the unnerving pacing of the track, from the girl’s quiet safety to a closeness of the parent that sonically dominates. The track is sublime, building on the imaginary half of the album to provide us with the illusion of escape, with any light at the end of the tunnel non-existent as “Maybae Baeby” draws to a subtle, shaken, and haunted close.
The neo-classic dominance of Ignore Grief hangs around its middle as Jamie provides
the respectively manic and soothing “Tarsier, Tarsier, Tarsier, Tarsier” and “Pahrump.” Both share a jagged saxophone backbone but approach their orchestral background quite different. The subtlety and carefulness of the tale of Laura Pahrump, which has as its end a growing contrasts “Tarsier’s” ultimate vocal and sonic breakdown, tapping into the more insistently disturbing elements of previous album’s, especially Girl with Basket of Fruit. Nevertheless, Xiu Xiu seem to approach this album with a more nuanced dread that requires the listener to be much more active in conceiving of what horror is created by means of these examples of dark ambient fairy tales.
In addition to this, “Pahrump’s” accompanying music video draws further on the bottled
expression of dance in its influences, registering a variety – The Vampire and the Ballerina, Kamikaze 89, Pierrot Lunaire, and Black Coral, Thin Ice – as similarly passionate attempts of controlling and funnelling the inescapability of Grief in their own circumstances.
From here Xiu Xiu develop the industrially humdrum clanks and buzzes of a “Border
Factory" excellently; disorientating strings and dragged chains of “Dracula Parrot, Moon Moth”; and slowly creeping presence of a worn “Brothel Creeper.” Each prioritise this exploration of Grief in more direct ways than to previous tracks: a quite blatant forebodingness surrounding the safety of prostitutes and heavy, deathly soundtrack to factory slavery.
The album closes on an eight-minute tour-de-force. “For M.” is, two decades on, another
ode to Jamie’s father, whose suicide initiated the forming of Xiu Xiu in 2002. Within the boundaries of such temporal distance from Grief and an event of suffering, its continuation, even after acceptance, is profound. Inspection of the lyrics may provide less grounding for this idea the summertime murder of character Melanie is expounded, but the subservience of the vocals to the instrumentation layer an ambiguity of meaning onto the track. Moreover, the band makes particular use of their purported Scott Walker avant-garde influence for the album, as Jamie channels his typically soft vocals from a foreboding and terrifying start – an episode and instantiation of Grief – and carries it onwards through an unnervingly pitched drone of synths, flying violin passages, to a quiet, but no less affecting close to the album.
Altogether, Ignore Grief is like no other musical experience I have had. Not from Xiu Xiu.
Not from experimental music overall. Even with its conceptual brilliance and painfully poignant illustrations of human suffering and ultimate redemption, under the lights of the taboo social commentary the band is so well known for, it is disturbing in the fact it is so human. The album demands a suspension of duality outside of its runtime: there is no “good” or “evil” substance to it, just the banality of suffering either in the world or your own head. It's a sonically demanding album and no easy listening, but it reflects part of life that music is rarely so vivid in capturing. A masterpiece of stifled pains and the fantasy that it will all one day go away.
IGNORE GRIEF – XIU XIU – 9.0/10
‘UGLY’ Slowthai ALBUM REVIEW:
Northampton’s child Slowthai returns with new album UGLY in a more ambitious state
than ever be for the artist. The project purportedly aims to move from the environmental analysis of Nothing Great About Britain and present-tense focus of Tyron, to a full inspection of Slowthai’s personality and self, doing so under changes in intensity, truth to the hip-hop genre, and, more generally, musical conventionality in general.
“Yum” is an incredibly driven opener and promptly proves Slowthai’s return is as
powerful as ever. The narrative of “Yum” weaves the environment of a therapist visit to dive into Ty’s own mind: this thoughts reverberating as sex, alcohol, and drugs over the intensely urban noire and darkening crescendos of a beat considerably different to anything Ty has worked with in the past. The track breaks down into a self-destruction remedied by ‘controlled’ breathing that screams into the next song “Selfish.” As the first single to the album, it adeptly signifies Slowthai’s movement towards punk-rap, initiated through simple guitar and drum components that build, with the subject matter of being swallowed by the system to a spiralling fall of paranoid vocals on independence and boldness in the face of disturbing social structures.
“Sooner” works quite well with a number of other vocalists and a more optimistic outlook
on episodes of sadness, yet “Feel Good” doesn’t inspire any such good feeling. Even if it is purposed to criticise hedonistic inescapability through being an annoying commercialised track, it’s difficult to sit down with the it and not feel trapped within its repetitive structure, irrespective of its condemnation of how it makes the listener feel.
Nevertheless, any ill feeling is waved away quickly with the incredibly poignant and
heartfelt ode “Never Again.” Starting from simple piano and tapping cymbals, which soon picks up pace, Slowthai’s presence on the song is dejected and laced with regret. He recounts the push and pull experiences associated with an ex who is soon revealed, following the introduction of some deep strings and meditative guitar, to have been murdered. How “Never Again” explores such direct grief is understandably motivated from Ty’s perspective but feels like more permanent advice for anyone attempting to manage such overwhelming emotions to be able to methodically sit with them.
The following tracks continue a strong run as “Fuck It Puppet” accounts for a dialogue
between Slowthai and a conscience snuffing, temptation throwing Devil on his shoulder; “HAPPY” and “UGLY,” the latter including a Fontaines D.C. feature, embrace the splitting of Slowthai’s last album Tyron in how their staccato choruses of ‘H-A-P-P-Y’ and ‘U-G-L-Y’ to contrast ‘I’d do everything for a smile’ with their respective punk and dark pop bases, blurring the line between the passion needed for attempts at happiness and relapses into self-hatred.
“Falling” escapes the momentum of its predecessors slightly, unnoticeably existing in itself without the vivid applications to Slowthai’s experiences but the simple sensation of falling into and away from yourself at the same time. “Wotz Funny” follows as the most punk song on UGLY, peppered with sharp orgasms and cockney oi-ois over its quite linear drum and guitar backing.
The album’s song comes penultimately with “Torniquet,” accessing exactly what we
love about Slowthai’s openness and honesty while also pushing drastically in the ambitious direction felt over the album. It’s a bridge between individual and self in its fearless begging for a lifeline from one’s own presence, played over a perfectly balanced battle between encircling instrumental and kicking and screaming, and lulls of hushed abandon, Slowthai. It could be the most characteristic song he has made yet.
The album fizzles out vaguely with “25% Club,” which is worked through as gallant
poetry over acoustic guitar but fails to engage with the central focuses of the album as potently as the previous tracks. But the softening of vocals to this extent, again, has not been performed by the artist over the past and is another welcome, if not entirely best-executed, step in a new direction.
Slowthai achieves more on UGLY than his previous two albums put together. The sole intention to work with his honest conception of himself through this project and deal with whatever content is brought up from this musical introspection. It’s a deeply personal listen conjoined exactly with how the artist believes themself to be like. Nevertheless, quality is less consistent than his previous two albums, a casualty to the head-first ambition I still profoundly respect on this. There is no presence of UGLYness past the title on the cover’s surface level, instead a degree of purity often missing from contemporary rap.
UGLY – SLOWTHAI – 7.6/10
‘Red Moon in Venus’ Kali Uchis ALBUM REVIEW:
Kali Uchis’s Latino pop reaches a sunnier bliss on her third album Red Moon in Venus.
The project threads together a striking and inviting spider’s web, decorated with a plethora of love songs with Uchis remaining right at its centre. While variety may be limited, each thread of irresistible vocals and crystalline production combines to allows each song to efficiently wavers and stick within this web.
The nature scape of the album glows from the opener “in My Garden…,” which
progresses from its cricket-chirps and quick ‘I love you’ reminder from Uchis to blossom into the psychedelic R&B lead single “I Wish You Roses.” The track melts its magnificent vocals into the immersive production of low-key guitar and relaxing taps of drum to produce a heartfelt stand-alone stroll through the sinless Garden of Eden Uchis is cultivating. “Worth the Wait” features Omar Apollo, whose backing is the soul bedrock Uchis is able to feed from. The instrumentals might be slightly thin in comparison to elsewhere on the album but Apollo, when present, fills this space well. “Love Between…” and “All Mine” continue all of these characteristics and slightly sacrifice their individual memorability as tracks but are equally easy listening. “Fantasy” opens with a progressive build up from soul and hip-hop artist Don Toliver that leads to faster tempo passages of Uchis on the most danceable beat of the album. Then there’s the theme of love: “Como Te Quiero Yo” and “Hasta Cuando” contrast uses of Spanish and English language to reflect internal and explicit innocence and passions; “Endlessly” with an ‘ever, ever, ever’ love yearning; “Not Too Late” functions as an extended interlude to furnish the album with another cheeky reminder to fall in love with Kali. “Blue” breaks the mould of these conventions to show what happens under an absence of love, a needed turning points drawing on ‘What’s the point of having all the pretty things in the world if I don’t have you?’ as clouds over the Sun of helpless love that has beamed over the album thus far, something that makes you contrastingly appreciate the Sun’s presence when Uchis allows it. Another strong song comes in the form of “Deserve Me.” The empowered dynamic between Uchis and Summer Walker further refreshes Red Moon as Kali’s soft denial of a lover juxtaposes Walker’s fiercer reprovals. Their backing echoes between harps and a bouncy, tubular bell synth sound, on top of a tame but noticeable summer trap beat. Continuing, through its attempts at introspection, “Moral Conscience” feels like the lowest point of the album as Uchis’s switches of vocal range and uninspiring lyrics meet an awkward drum selection and dwelling synths to feel considerably less paradisical than the rest of the tracks. The penultimate song “Moonlight” hangs on the single moment of smoking out of a window and ‘getting high in the moonlight,’ Uchis acting as an angelic partner for the experience under the cloak of a smooth and plucky bassline and butterfly wings of some chimes. The album ends slightly weakly on “Happy Now,” feeling formulaic in its repetitive lines “happy now” and “rainbow,” that eventually uneventfully dissipate out to the sound of a rolling time, marking the serenity of the paradise Uchis has made for us a little too abruptly to let us fully drift on.
Altogether, although you are able to have the album figured out from pretty much the
first track, and this lack of scope detracts from the uniqueness of a number of tracks, the intention resting behind them simply doesn’t purpose the album in such a way. Red Moon is Kali Uchis’s most absorbing listen, and although it pales in many respects to her incredible debut Isolation, once you’re stuck to the web that the album is, there’s little to do but enjoy your time there. Its contents can bring about the summer at any time of year and doesn’t mind dwelling in the Sun for longer than necessary.
RED MOON IN VENUS – KALI UCHIS – 7.7/10
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