Review Summary: Fountains of joy and sorrow
Marcel Duchamp's contributions to twentieth century art get mad props from the artistic community, which is miraculous given that one of his prevailing theories can be paraphrased as 'art is kinda bullshit', and his most famous work —
Fountain; simply a urinal signed by “R. Mutt” — seems to be misinterpreted by many, praised for its aesthetics rather than considered in its context. Duchamp's work was supposed to call for a reconsideration of what we consider to be worthy of the word art, eschewing “retinal” art in favour of something more conceptual, art that requires thoughtful engagement from its audience.
The cover art for Swiss-based multi-national group Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp's debut record
OTP depicts a starkly drawn urinal, and at one point a voice that I'm going to assume is Orchestre regular Liz Moscarola has a screaming Deustche diatribe that includes the phrase “
mein grosser Schwanz” over impure, screeching instrumentation. At this point in the Orchestre's career, it was pretty easy to draw a clear line to the Dadaists of yesteryore.
Across their five LPs since 2007, the Orchestre has shed this skin, and their subsequent growth, shrinkage, and mutation in terms of both personnel and style has seen their musical aesthetics settle somewhere between sweetly sorrowful and subtly joyous, refusing to spend too much time in the Gallery of Found Objects trying to force the audience into staring at plumbing fixtures and thinking about genitalia.
In this instance, I'm going to have to uncharacteristically advocate for the Orchestre's jettisoning of the crass. What the thirteen musicians credited (that's still two shy of their P.B. on wax) display across the trim 37 minutes of
We're OK. But We're lost anyway. is sweetly alluring, and more inherently pleasurable than it is thought-provoking.
If all this talk of experimentation and exorbitant numbers of musicians coming and going has your brain shouting words like “Fire!”, “Orchestra”, “reunion”, and “Swans”, give yourself a pat on the back. These are handy reference points, but are by no means definitive. Add to that list a smorgasbord of genre influences reminiscent of Keleketla!, a nod towards the stylings of Sons of Kemet et al, and our word cloud that should theoretically describe this ragtag outfit begins to look a little something like this: organic, dynamic, fluid, powerful, ritualistic, jazzy, groovy, unsettling, mantra-like.
Creaking the door open into this world of sound is “Be Patient”, which is a climaxless slow-build filled with minute flourishes that comes to a close calmly, shrouding any expectations about the release to come as the band stays their hand. “Empty Skies” follows this with a more definitive statement of intent. Cluttered uptempo percussion lays down a sturdy framework for the many instrumentalists to zip in and out of, and this general arrangement persists for much of the album. The defining moment for “Empty Skies”, though, is a subversion of the tendencies of similarly well-staffed collectives to define a song's dynamics as a straight line graph with a positive gradient, increasing in intensity as each new layer is introduced until bedlam ensues. Instead, when the song is almost fully-developed, vigorously strummed electric guitars signaling an inevitable boil-over, the band choose to simmer down to marimba tomfoolery and soft horns before tying the bow with a sense of restrained triumph. It's fuckin' classy, man.
If “Empty Skies” doesn't even vaguely get your jollies off, you're an empty husk of a human being and don't deserve this album. Get out. For those with souls, stick around, because you're in for oh so much more joy. “So Many Things (To Feel Guilty About)” is a straight bop, laced with detail and containing the album's most direct lyrics, making the explicitly contemporary themes apparent; “Blabber” is a delightful, stripped back, marimba-centric jaunt that retains its relentless positivity even when the strings are squalling away in protest; “We Can Can We” is a deceptively tricky journey through quirky 7/8 rhythms; “Flux” brings the noir vibes and provides perhaps the biggest mood here when the double bass line enters like the fucking Kool-Aid man with some brand of sawing percussion as accompaniment; and “Connected” is a fun experiment in layering voices, with swirling delay sends and long-tailed reverbs helping the lead vocal to lap over the sides of the track.
If there's a definitive selling point here, though, it's “Beginning”. It's as if “You're A King” by Lowercase was sped up and handed to reunion-brand Swans to expand on. The opening vocal sections sound like that weird thing they do in cartoons to represent the voices of all-powerful villains or Gods, where spoken word in different registers is layered to create an intimidating, all-too-human inhuman chorus. The song's closing couple of minutes are an undoubted highlight of the album, a triumphant amalgam of everything the song has worked toward paired with harmonious, glorious vocal melodies. Chef's kisses abound, urinals are far from thought.
If there's complaint to be had here, it mostly lies at the bookends. “Be Patient” isn't a bad track in itself, but next to most of the material on this album it's not particularly noteworthy. There's also plenty to like about the somber closer “Silent”, but it's brevity makes for a rather unsatisfying conclusion to an album begging for a dramatic ending. The Orchestre's hesitancy to really let their music ignite at any point winds up being a double-edged sword; it subtly masks their more clever turns of pace, but takes away from cuts that could use just that lil bit more gravy.
Otherwise,
We're OK. But We're lost anyway. is certified hot shit. The musicianship is interesting without being overbearing, the songwriting is surprisingly concise, the mixing is as clear and wide as our collective existential doom in 2021, and the band manages to juggle an unusual mixture of dulcet tones and joyous expressionism with occasional pangs of harshness and uncertainty with a deft touch. While the influence of a man that takes up two-fifths of the band's stoopidly long name is almost impossible to place at this point, I can't say I'm particularly concerned.
