Review Summary: Kill yr idols
Upon listening to Agitprop Alterna, I'm reminded of a line in
Destroyer's “Looters’ Follies” on their excellent Rubies record, where Dan Bejar declares that “a life in art and a life of mimicry [are] the same thing”, acknowledging the divide between art and artifice. This is what makes
Peel Dream Magazine’s Agitprop Alterna such a resounding failure – it reads as a gimmicky nostalgia trip, one that employs familiar sounds to draw the listener in but lacks any substance underneath the sheen.
The first few seconds of “Pill” instantly recall a number of sounds from
My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless: you can hear Colm O Ciosoig’s repetitive drum fills, an organ that sounds curiously similar to Kevin Shields’ guitar sound, and a barely-distinguishable Bilinda Butcher-esque vocal performance. These sounds repeat for three or so minutes before fading out without any noticeable impact.
“Pill”’s qualities already evidence the one major problem that dooms Agitprop Alterna from the outset – it plays for an aesthetic, a discount mood as opposed to a genuine love of craft and a desire to replicate the experimental attitude that made Loveless such a groundbreaking artistic success. As the album staggers on, tracks become distinguished not by the silence that separates them but by minor instrumental touches – a Krautrock-style drum machine hovering over “It’s My Body”, the slightest touch of reverb and stereo panning on “The Bertolt Brecht Society”, and the jittery synth that appears on both “Do It” and “Up and Up”. The latter track does leave the record on a somewhat hopeful note, though – the lyrics detail a fond image of flying, which paired with the relatively-diverse instrumental palette makes for a more interesting and enjoyable song.
The lyrics, when scrutinized, are precisely meaningless – “fantasia truths”, “emotional devotion creator”, “shoes/shoes/shoes”, “Unhand the man, you animal hater” – an assortment of pretty-sounding words that generally fail to warrant even the most generous defense of abstraction in art. There seems to be little effort taken in this area – rather than attempting even banal displays of emotion, the record is loaded top-to-bottom with lyrical Lorem Ipsum-isms.
Even though the sounds on this album are not patently offensive, the true lack of originality on this album is incredibly irritating. This is only marginally better than the Supreme sticker inexplicably slapped on a water bottle, the Ramones logo stamped onto a pair of flip-flops, the garden-variety romance/Christmas/Christmas romance movies on Hallmark. There is nothing wrong with a desire to emulate one’s idols, but plagiarizing their ideas and replacing any sentiment with pure balderdash is *not cool*.
