Review Summary: *extremely shrug emoji*
Once a band achieves a certain level of acclaim, fame or infamy -- even in niche circles -- they are faced with a seemingly intractable catch-22 burdened on them by music criticism. Cleave too close to established structure and they run the risk of being afforded the label of one-trick ponies, treading water, being stuck in auto-pilot et al. Cleave away from the sound they've curated and accusations and denouncements will flow thick and fast. The risk of "This isn't the old Preoccupations we know and loved!" battles with the equally concerning risk of "this just sounds like the last album but with (or without) 'x'". Off the top of my head, two of Sonic Youth's finest albums - NYC Ghosts and Washing Machine - were given these critiques respectively. Neither of the criticisms have aged well, sure, but how can than matter when Sonic Youths ubiquity was such that the reaction is still imbued into the albums DNA - "this is the one the critics hated", one is told as an apologetic caveat. Music criticism is vital and necessary; it also makes reactionaries of us all.
People change, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, and sometimes minutely and sometimes so much as to make your old friend from high school unrecognizable. Accordingly bands, composed of fallible, fickle bastard humans as they are, are going to change too; it's about whether they progress or regress (or just egress). Consider the tragic tale of The Men, who's early vim, vigour and snarl has somehow been replaced by dirgy, tedious, bro-country sing-alongs, traces of which comprised the most cringe-worthy moments of their early work. Here I draw the distinction. While albums by different bands can and maybe should sound different, even disparate, in relation to each other, there has to be some kind of underlying ethos or throughline that's adhered to, especially in the case of punk bands who run the risk of selling out, which here means losing the inculcated anger, penetrating directness and take-no-prisoners approach that often define them.
In this way bands are swaddled by their very nature in a way solo projects aren't: if solo artists want to explore terrain through a different lens, they can simply adopt a moniker, concoct a more fitting sobriquet (see: Huerco S.' warmth vs. Pendant's refridgerated chilliness). Bands, more beholden to the afore-mentioned ethos and lineage, often can't.
I bloviate periphrastically sure, but I'm getting to my point
- Viet Cong were obviously distinguished from Women and chart completely different territory but
- so too are Viet Cong and Preoccupations because their name change (the politics of which will not be broached in detail here)
- was, in a sense, propitious, not so much a name-change as an ideological appellation that semiotically indicates a shift in direction from a more visceral, clamorous post-punk into
- more personal preoccupations, usually to do with neuroses, peccadilloes, flaws that highlighted the terror of living in a system but not railing against it; a markedly more personal approach to song-writing, more self-referential and anguished, an integration of poppier structures and synths. (Viet Cong = Joy Division, Preoccupations = New Order?)
The same wry sense of humour and structure still exists, though one doesn't need to dig as deep to discover it. The album title, "new material", is a great throwaway joke about the commodification of music that exists as an anathema to commercial concerns. The pithy, one-word song titles coalesce to tell a story of their own, listing a series of preoccupations (and how fitting is it that ends on the word "compliance"? how nihilistic, how hopeless; as No Trend prognosticated years ago, how can you rally against systemic issues when they're so ubiquitous, so overarching, your reaction is necessarily subsumed within their language and framework? how can one put up a fight when you're borrowing your opponents gloves) in a way that offers a sad, funny narrative of its own.
Oh. The music. I don't know. I like it. I liked their last album too though, so their doubling down on synthy, wavey, more parabolic than angular guitars while exploring the same thematic concerns (read the song titles) appeals to me as a more fleshed-out sonic texture. There is more focus on background details (a guitar churning in the clamour of espionage is easily lost in the literal shuffle but is insidious when you hear it). The last three tracks are phenomenal, with Solace returning to their roots briefly before Doubt and Compliance offering a *** you to solace. If there are a couple of meandering side-tracks en route, they breeze through small towns i don't mind visiting in passing. And, no matter how hard I try and end this piece of media on a high, I'm not sure I can top Compliance's shimmering buzzsaw synths and industrial drums. After all these years Preoccupations still know how to pummel me into compliance. And as someone terrified of getting complacent, that's all the linkage I need.
