“Peek through cyclone and hurricane.“
Mat Ball is best-known as for his exceptionally creative guitarwork in doomgaze band BIG|BRAVE. Their album a chaos of flowers, released earlier this year, is a punchy, noisy, swaggering release that rocks the listener from side to side. Efrim Manuel Menuck is a semi-mythical figure in the post-rock world who needs no introduction (if you’ve never heard of Godspeed You! Black Emperor… well, you have now). Jonathan Downs and Patch One, both of post-rock outfit Ada, round out the band, but this has primarily been billed as a Ball–Menuck collaboration.
Now, we have to be careful when we label things as “collaborations” and not just as “a new band”. When we use the “collaboration” label (or – even worse – “supergroup”) we immediately start messing with our expectations and set ourselves up for unnecessary disappointment. Certainly, if you’re expecting BIG|BRAVE meets Godspeed You! Black Emperor you will feel short-changed. However, if you’re familiar with Ball and Menuck’s solo works you will be less surprised by what you find.
“No More Apocalypse Father”, the debut album of WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN, is an interesting album. It is technically an album of songs: there’s singing, instrumentation and rhythm. But none of it feels very song-like. The singing is very free-form, completely uncatchy, with no obvious verse or chorus structures. There are instruments, but the guitars and synths tend to merge together into one big, fuzzy, swirling hum. (If you were hoping to say “Hey man, cool guitar licks” at some point, maybe this isn’t the album for you.) And the rhythm is almost entirely supplied by throbbing synth lines.
The word “experimental” is overused, especially in the post-rock/ambient/drone/noise circles from which WAWBARC originates. But “No More Apocalypse Father” is unlike anything else I have listened to this year.
Above all else, this album feels like a product of its surroundings. “No More Apocalypse Father” was recorded at the legendary Hotel2Tango recording studios, where the bandmates first met. It is an album that feels very analogue, fuzzy, warm, rough-around-the-edges, and has the earnest, honest quality that has almost become a trademark of Hotel2Tango. It’s hard to imagine this sort of music being created anywhere else.
A lot of the songs have the same underlying formula: fuzzy textures, a simply pulsing beat, and free-form vocals. I can’t tell if this was a conscious decision, but it allows for a surprising amount of versatility. “Rats And Roses” and “Tremble Pour Light” conform to this structure in a fairly predictable style, with all kinds of details from the mix of guitars and synths rising and falling in the mix. However, the third and fourth tracks take this to opposite extremes. “No More Apocalypse Father” is by far the noisiest, most arresting track on this album, with huge, relentless beats that crush the listener into submission. It is followed by “Uncloudy Days”, an almost sweet piece: a gentle waltzing beat and some quaint, endearing synth lines that gradually build. The exception to this structure is “Dangling Blanket from a Balcony (White Phosphorous)”, which starts with Menuck crooning over some guitar noodling until the band goes into a ten-minute fuzz-noise-distortion jam that wouldn’t have felt out of place on a krautrock album.
The textures on this album are a real treat. There’s an incredible attention to detail: in “Tremble Pour Light”, different guitar parts float in and out as the song gently bobs along. “Uncloudy Days” gradually builds into a haze of beautiful euphoria. It avoids all the stereotypes that you might associate with drone or post-rock music. The album’s closer, “(Goodnight) White Phosphorous”, strips away all the noise and leaves the listener with a beautiful, eerie piece of synth-based ambience.
However, I have to admit that I found the vocals to be a bit hit-and-miss. It’s nice to have a mix of vocalists, but getting vocals to work in what is essentially ambient music has always been a challenge. I think the vocals work on “Rats and Roses”, which has clear chord changes which the vocals neatly follow. But elsewhere, the vocals tend to feel untethered from the accompanying music. This is most obvious on the least structured tracks, “Tremble Pour Light”, “Uncloudy Days” (which I might have preferred if they were instrumental) and “(Goodnight) White Phosphorous” (which, with a runtime of eight minutes, I think is just far too long.) “No More Apocalypse Father” has a structure which the vocals vaguely follow, but because the instruments are buried under distortion, it feels like things don’t quite match up. I’m not sure how many of these issues can be pinned on the vocal lines or the mix or perhaps something else, but something doesn’t feel right.
This is an album of droney, fuzzy, analogue glory. On paper, it sounds simple, but this is a fantastically detailed album that rewards repeated listens. If you are looking for an album of Hotel2Tango worship and willing to forgive the occasionally distracting vocals, check it out. Just don’t expect it to command your attention like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or BIG|BRAVE.
7/10
“No More Apocalypse Father” releases on the 13th of September and can be pre-ordered here.