Review Summary: Don’t do what Donny Don’t does
It was in a watershed 2002 address concerning purported weapons of mass destruction the obliviously cack-handed aspiring warrior-poet Donald Rumsfeld popularised what has since become known as the “Rumsfeld Matrix”. Essentially a bi-axial system of second-order epistemological categorisation, the Rumsfeld Matrix has, in the decades since, been completely subsumed into the popular lexicon, and stands chief, if not alone, among the former U.S. Secretary of State’s positive contributions to society.
It works like this:
Take out a #2 graphite pencil, a ruler, and a blank A4 page. With your pencil and ruler, mark upon the paper two separate points, both equidistant from the top and bottom of the page, and join them to create one horizontal line. Now bisect this line with one identical but perpendicular, such that you are confronted with a crude impression of the world of infinite possibility that is the Cartesian Plane. Label each limb of this equal-armed cross with either the word “known” or “unknown”, so that each quadrant of the plane before you now represents a unique combination of these two terms. Take a moment to appreciate your ability to unquestioningly follow orders.
Now set your page aside - we will return to it presently.
Knower are a California-based duo composed of drummer/multi-instrumentalist Louis Cole and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Genevieve Artadi, and among the first jazz-adjacent creators to successfully leverage social media platforms like YouTube as methods for popular dissemination of their art. After pioneering a publicity model that has become de rigueur for a subsequent generation of musicians, the duo eventually placed the project on ice to further establish themselves as solo artists. Knower’s latest release, 2023’s
KNOWER FOREVER, is their first in seven years, and serves as equal parts reunion and reintroduction to these cult favourites’ decade-plus career.
With a name such as theirs though, a question is begged: What is it that Knower actually purport to know? Does the name suggest a sort of epistemic terminus; a gestalt of all that could be knowable; all possible human awareness encompassed within an omniscient ideal? Or is the word “Knower” used here by the group in a gnostic sense - do they title themselves as such as a claim to possess secrets uniquely revealed - or else heretofore undiscovered? Is there a way to figure out what exactly it is Knower know, and whether they know they know it or not?
Direct your attention now to the Rumsfeld Matrix we prepared earlier, and remember: don’t do what Donny Don’t does.
The Known Knowns: A surface level appraisal of Knower as terminally online, aggressively millennial Berklee Funk would be entirely ill-founded – the duo are, after all, USC Thornton graduates. As may be expected, Knower don’t just know their way around the musical stave, they, like any Thornton graduate, self-respecting or otherwise, know they know their way around.
KNOWER FOREVER shades a canvas of jazzy compositional sensibility with bitcrushed synthesisers and breathy pop melodies, the outline traced in crunchy funk grooves. This mastery of medium and form is displayed not just by the core duo, but by the veritable clown car’s complement of guest musicians that populate
KNOWER FOREVER’s liner notes, providing everything from string and brass orchestration to pulsating bass acrobatics. In one of the album’s most overt references to their jazz pedigree, Artadi and Cole provide their collaborators with plenty of opportunities to showcase their talents as soloists, with such moments often serving as well-earned cathartic release from the rhythmic tension built on many cuts. Artadi’s bitingly sarcastic lyrics default most often to a suggestively ironic sing-song that drifts like fog through Cole’s blown-out, lo-fi soundstage; the best illustrations of which include the writhing stomp of
I’m the President, a knockout blow that follows the album’s eponymous orchestral overture, and the sinister lope of lead single
Do Hot Girls Like Chords?.
The Known Unknowns: Almost as well as they know their strengths, Knower know what they don’t know - or at least, what they don’t know how to pull off as well as the things they do. Chief among them: Knower know they don’t know how to make more laid back tracks as captivating as more energetic ones in their current style. This leads to the band consciously leaning into Cole’s hyperactive drumming; most successfully on cuts like
The Abyss, which caterwauls atop Cole’s breakbeat interpretation.
KNOWER FOREVER has relatively few tracks which wind back to let things breathe. Aside from the stately splendour of closer
Crash the Car, the album’s sole low-tempo success,
Same Smile, Different Face peters out into silence after two and a half minutes, and
Real Nice Moment’s earnest poetry is undercut by a stodgy, stolid arrangement. The result is a much less dynamic album than one may expect from a duo with such a musical pedigree - and one which deliberately abandons such dynamics to play to the kinetic triumph of tracks like the abhorrently danceable
Nightmare.
The Unknown Knowns: Conspicuously absent from Rumsfeld’s original address, it was philosopher and living meme Slavoj Zizek that proffered that, though instinctively read as “something which one does not realise one knows,” it may be more useful to think of this quadrant of our Matrix as “the things we know, but would prefer to act like we don’t”. And when it comes to Knower, there is one issue that the band seems content to ignore. Though a capable and accomplished vocalist, the closest Artadi comes to deviating from her usual airy sighing is during the aforementioned
Do Hot Girls Like Chords?, where she successfully transitions to a maliciously robotic delivery that comes across like an impression of Alexa with an axe to grind. For the most part, though it works well for tracks such as the minimalist slow burn of
Ride the Dolphin and the frenzied basketball-in-your-brain chiptune of
It’s All Nothing Until It’s Everything Artadi’s lack of deviation from the playbook, whether a deliberate stylistic affectation, or a genuine limitation (one suspects the former) robs
KNOWER FOREVER of both the potential emotional resonance of some of it’s more vulnerable moments, and a sense of versatility sorely needed given the already-made decision to lean on Cole’s busier arrangements. Why the band is content to leave this unaddressed, even if just for the sake of stylistic consistency, is ultimately inexplicable.
The Unknown, Unknown: Whether a case of nominative determinism, or an appropriately-selected aptronym, it is evident that Knower know many things: their target audience, their instruments, their medium, and their limitations. Unfortunately though, meaningful analysis of our final quadrant from here becomes nigh on impossible – hard as it is to assess the extent of our ignorance on some questions. Will
KNOWER FOREVER prove to be the beginning of a new chapter of experimentation for the band, or will it prove to be a fitting swan song for two pioneers of social media’s quickly-fading Wild West?
As Donald Rumsfeld cannily misappropriated on that fateful day in 2002, there are some things that ultimately, are beyond our capacity for knowing – whether in advance, or, oftentimes, at all.
And in the end, when it comes to a group like Knower, isn’t that all part of the fun?
