Of the titles here, the most helpful is track 5, “Modern Art Bewilders.” Assuming, this is modern art, after multiple listens, lyric sheet in hand, the overall impact here is utter bewilderment. The first audible words of “Marijuana’s a Working Woman,” the albums opening track turns out to be pretty instructive: “In the sensory overload chamber.”
The music flows in one direction only to divert off in another, but quickly changes gears and directions again, mixing rhythms, keyboard textures, and tones with little that suggests an overall compositional focus or purpose. The melodies seem to serve a singular lyric, or a flow of random words and phrases, strung together with little sense or identifiable theme. There’s a joke here (“When people ask me my gender I tell them brunette”), then an odd thought like “Maybe we should fight it always seems to make everything better” gets repeated as if it’s some kind of chorus, but is it really.
“Blab Sabbath Lathe of the Maiden” has a perky, hip-hop infused rhythm, and at one point channels Prince, singing “I was creaming when I wrote this, so forgive me if I make a mess.” Elsewhere you hear Barnes’ take on Bowie, lots of Rundgren-esque synth pop transitions, but the overall feel is completely self-interested, likely only appealing to the most smitten by the untethered nature of everything here, but for casual listeners the impact is likely to be confusion and distraction. The closing track “Hmmm” opens with finger-picked guitar, before a hip-hop beat kicks off, with a lyric that deals with the issue of “grief” and “loss” in a cohesive, poetic, and understandable way, suggesting what would likely have been possible elsewhere here.
Brian Q. Newcomb
For more of Brian Q. Newcomb’s music reviews, check out The Fire Note
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