Women - Women (Jagjaguwar)
3/5
By: Emily Kaiser
Remove all but the instrumentals and Women impresses on their self-titled debut, out this month on Jagjaguwar. This Canadian four-piece assembles their discourses well, with melodic spurts that emerge and escape like a whack-a-mole game. Unfortunately, all the other elements of the songs invoke being smacked with that padded mallot.
Simultaneously relaxing and momentous, almost every track is halted just at the moment you get into it by their self-described "junkyard trash brawls". Feedback and dissonant singing are inserted like daggers in a way that seems intentionally designed to ruin a good thing. Scratches, tweaks, and aural irks will always make their presence known just soon enough so you never forget. No one track is really discernible from another because of all the noise thrown in between and the album becomes a chore as a result. Ends of songs, beginnings of songs, filler tracks, no realm is safe from the calamity that makes you tense at the start but ultimately just disappointed that they're still trying to make the claustrophobia comfortable.
Escaping the noise affliction, 'Black Rice' is a solid indie track that stands out among the confusion of the rest of the album. Minimal vocals sit behind a simple, unwrinkled beat. A contrasting child-like xylophone and old-twang guitar drive the melody that set the whole song up as the start of an acceptably melancholy day.
'Sag Harbour Bridge' takes a melodic journey that, perhaps in its namesake, bridges masterfully. Its building arpeggios scale up your anticipation. Unfortunately even that falls through, the culminating track is nothing more than a weak early Of Montreal knock-off, 'Group Transport Hall', that runs only a minute and has no discernible purpose.
The rest of the album dwindles in the same way. The discomfort produced by the clashing vocals is one you're not willing to sit through and results in nothing but annoyance, yet the music maintains itself and is quite phenomenal. Flowing quickly, you keep chasing after tracks such as 'Shaking Hand'. A head can only bob so fast! Perhaps Women considered this when they assembled the album; with every other track I reluctantly receive that time to catch up while listening to an entirely undesirable concoction. I would rather they have left me behind.
Artists in this article: Women
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