Review Summary: Injury Reserve have found their purgatory and it’s a hellscape you won’t want to leave.
Stumbling around in a depressive fugue, mind wracked over grief and societal collapse, biding time until the apocalypse arrives.
By the Time I Get to Phoenix captures this state of being, placing the listener in an embodied role within the scene. Closer to an experimental art piece than a hip-hop record, Injury Reserve transform their trauma – bandmate Jordan Groggs died last year at the age of 32 – into a devastating work that shatters all conventions of what a rap album can be.
What most impressed me about Yves Tumor’s
Safe in the Hands of Love was its unlocking of neural pathways between electronic and rock music, and I sense a similar revelation here.
By the Time I Get to Phoenix draws from both hip-hop and rock, but the result is far from any notion of “rap rock.” Rather, a link is drawn between experimental hip-hop and experimental rock: abstract production meets dissonant riffs a la This Heat’s
Deceit, amounting to a fever dream of purgatory that starts in the body. Take lead single “Knees,” which sets guitar stabs against a stumbling beat, all the elements alienated from each other. In this flatline, the group conveys the harrowing grip of alcoholism. Completed before Groggs’ death, his contribution is gut-wrenching, a window into the psyche that likely led to his demise. And a psyche is felt in the body, as evoked throughout the album: aching joints, the throb of a headache, cortisol surging through the bloodstream.
More than other recent ‘sound collage’ records, this one captures that sense of embodiment.
Red Burns vividly depicted a city stroll through its fragmented scenes, yet only looked outward at the world. That sound influenced
Some Rap Songs, a similarly lethargic album about grief, yet it remained wedded to conventional structure. By untethering from structure,
By the Time I Get to Phoenix becomes a transmission of consciousness that fully realizes the aesthetic. I’m struck by how, despite the apocalyptic imagery – the cover recalls the orange sky during last year’s wildfires in California – I don’t visualize any scenes when I listen. Perhaps the most frightening suggestion of this weird, ominous album is that amidst a collapsing world, we can only see ourselves.
Glitch is present throughout the record, but never in a jarring context. It is employed as a medium for atmosphere, akin to Fennesz’s
Endless Summer. The density of a collage approach can overwhelm, so Injury Reserve take care to calibrate the sounds in the mix. By separating the sonic elements, a clash is avoided and the narcotized mood prevails. “Superman That” is an exception, led by a wild, careening beat inspired by IDM, wonky and flashcore. Only a fatalistic hook (“ain’t no savin' me or you”) keeps the listener hitched to the ride as it spirals towards inevitable doom. Somehow, it is the most accessible track on the album.
I’ve been thinking lately of how to categorize the recent crop of apocalyptic music. Granted, this topic has inspired art for millennia, but there’s a distinct sense of unreality to our current age. That is felt in how we experience these end times records. Take perhaps the most quintessential,
F♯A♯∞ : we used to engage with it as fantasy, then take off our headphones and return to the world. That isn’t possible anymore: a continuum is felt between a vision of apocalypse and the collapse we’re heading towards. We rely on artists to capture the sign of the times, to help us understand what’s in the air. Injury Reserve have tapped into that atmosphere, crafting a muggy, surreal masterpiece that feels genuinely new. I feel seen by its portrayal of alienation, and that’s enough to carry me through when the music stops and I surface back to the world, more able to process what’s coming next.
