Review Summary: How did we sleep on this? How can we sleep on this?
Bodysongs forces you to acknowledge its existence. It throttles you giddily, its Adderall-addled synths, guitars, and bitcrushed-to-absolute-shit drums slapping you in the face with an almost-frightening urgency. It makes a direct grab for your heart with its irresistible and, yes, even
moving words:
"What a weary way we fall/ we're as old as emeralds." It exists purely in the moment - so what if over half of these songs are in the exact same key or have extremely similar melodies? - and it's convinced that this is the only way to right wrongs.
"If you have a cruel complaint/ say it, just say it," exhorts "Morning Bath". (Note to self: never take relationship advice from Cecil Frena.) It longs for immortality, but is smart enough to know the futility of such a quest. It begs you to give it a second chance, insisting that it'll be
"your boring horror/ your glowing black chimera," and although you may be exhausted by its relentless loudness, hyperactivity, and surface sheen of ecstatic joy, the poise and gravitas of Born Gold's songs pull you back in, the anxiety driving them to be as exultantly
physical as they are speaking even louder than the album's ridiculously frenzied production.
Because
Bodysongs is about
you, goddammit! And these songs are as deeply felt as they come - vaguely cloying high school poetry on paper but life-affirming mantras on record. It's about "us" because Born Gold love to represent the nonspecific majority through the sweat-soaked jubilance of their increasingly legendary live show, masking insecurities, fears, and, yes, corporal obsession beneath layer upon layer of buzzing sound. This stuff is masterfully produced, expertly walking the very thin line separating feverish energy from full-on chaos. But more importantly, they seem perpetually on the brink of excess, Frena's words consistently hitting that sweet spot right before "annoyingly saccharine" and thankfully far away from "calculatedly aloof". By keeping us on the edge of our seats, these Canadian whippersnappers ensure that we'll always ready to jump out of them.
